Assignment Tokyo Page 4

  The faint light splintered on Freeling’s gold-rimmed glasses. He had a balloon-glass of brandy in his bony fingers, and he swirled the amber liquor thoughtfully.

  “Mr. Durell, I gather you are at odds with Mr. Cummings, here. I am not answerable to him. I report directly to Joint Chiefs and the White House. No one else. I do not intend to begin by quarreling with you as to priorities, or in blaming anyone for what has happened.”

  “Make it honest,” Durell suggested, “and don’t keep anything from me. I don’t like to work in the dark. If it’s our fault, what happened at Hatashima, say so.”

  “We don’t know for certain.”

  “But it’s a possibility?”

  “Yes.”

  “A strong possibility?”

  “I cannot see it.” Freeling looked at Melvin Cummings, who seemed purple in his desire to put in a few mellifluous words. Cummings, under that glance, relapsed and was silent. Freeling went on, “We have several priorities. We must prove these plague bodies are not ours—” “That’s your first priority?” Durell asked.

  “Yes. For the sake of international relations—”

  “Suppose you’re wrong? Suppose it really is Pearl Q-27?”

  “We must negate such public knowledge.”

  “I see. Guilty or innocent, I prove we’re innocent?”

  “It would be a great relief to Washington if you could do that.”

  Durell felt contempt for both men. He said, “And the other priorities?”

  “We must help stop the plague, of course. And we must find this missing girl who might spread it—this Yoko Kamuru.”

  “I’d say you have your priorities mixed.”

  Freeling tasted his brandy. “Indeed?”

  “I’d say we bend every effort to contain this epidemic, save lives, and then worry about who’s to blame.”

  “Perhaps you can do it all at once.” Freeling spoke mildly. Nothing could be seen of his eyes through his glasses. “It would be helpful. The difficulty is, from all the data I’ve received for analysis, you have only forty-eight horns to do it in.”

  “That’s not much time.”

  “By then, according to extrapolative means, I judge that most of northern Honshu, the area called Tohoku, will be in the grip of this pestilence.”

  Melvin Cummings whined, “It will be the end of all reasonable relations with Japan and the Far East. The Russians will make capital of it. You can imagine what Moscow will say. And the Chinese. Durell, you have to fix this somehow.”

  Durell’s face was a mask of anger. “Dr. Freeling, is there an antidote to Pearl Q-27?”

  “No.”

  “Were you working on it?”

  “We have nothing that can help.”

  “Assume it’s Pearl Q. How did it get here?”

  Both men were silent. Durell picked up the brandy bottle and poured himself a drink. The brittle figure of Dr. Freeling did not stir. Cummings fidgeted. From what Durell knew of CBW, their weapons varied from highly virulent diseases, for which there was no known cure, to nerve gases that could be fatal in seconds. Not to mention herbicides such as 2, 4, 5-T, CS tear gas, incendiaries and other crippling gases like BZ. The inventory was enormous and incredible. At Fort Detrick in Maryland there were germs being cultivated for encephalitis, anthrax, dengue, Chikungumya fever, smallpox and Q fever. Any of it could be spread through animals, insects, birds, fish, water supplies and aerosol-type bombs, sprays, shells, and thermal foggers.

  He knew the U.S. was not alone in these ghastly developments. The Soviet Union maintained a vast and grisly arsenal of much the same in CBW weaponry. China, England, France, Egypt, and Canada were members of the same grim club. There was GB and VX in the form of nerve gases, and DM as a multiple-reaction gas to add to the roster of germs in the laboratories of bacteriological and virological warfare.

  In November of 1969, the President renounced the use of germ warfare and ordered the destruction of existing stockpiles of such weapons.

  Dr. Freeling stirred slightly in his green chair.

  “Mr. Durell, I know your thoughts. All the efforts of CBW have recently been turned toward creating reasonable deterrents against these weapons. We need such serums and antitoxins desperately, if only as a means of national defense. But virological development moves fast, and there are lengthy lead times in discovering antidotes. If this is Pearl Q-27 up in Hatashima, I must confess we have no answer to it.”

  “So millions may die?”

  The skeletal head nodded. “It could happen. I have no samples of this virus, no victims to analyze, no means to get to them. It is up to you.”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Durell said. “How could it get up there in Hatashima?”

  Cummings coughed hollowly. “You don’t have to know that.”

  “Then there is something to know?” Durell asked.

  Freeling swirled the brandy in his glass. “Yes, there is one possibility. We know the Japanese intelligence services found an unmarked canister on the Hatashima beach, similar to the sort of shipping containers we’ve been using to return and nullify such batches of viral ‘soup.’ But there is no logical explanation of how it could get there.”

  “Give me an illogical explanation then.”

  “It could have been stolen from us.” Freeling held up a thin, brittle finger. “That is one consideration. I’m having an inventory made, top priority. So far, the results are negative, except—”

  “Go on,” Durell said. “You can’t scare me any worse than I am already.”

  Freeling’s spectacles shot splinters of light at him. “Yes, you are sensible to be afraid. Finish the brandy.”

  “I can guess. We’ve lost some canisters?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here?”

  “None were ever located in Japan proper.”

  “In Okinawa, then?”

  “A small number.”

  “Still there?”

  “Homeward bound. By special Naval transport ship. The 626 sailed four days ago from Naha. She has not been heard from since. There was a meteorological disturbance in the Pacific at that time. But there have been no reports from 626 since she left Naha. She is due in Oregon; the cargo is to be sent to Umatilla Depot in Hermiston for storage and eventual detoxification at Pine Bluff, Arkansas.”

  “The ship sank in a storm? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “But if she sank and one canister got loose, could it float and drift in the Japanese current and get on the beach at Hatashima?”

  “It is a small probability.”

  “But possible?”

  “Anything is possible,” Freeling said.

  Cummings said hoarsely, “You shouldn’t have told him that, Dr. Freeling. That’s got top classification.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Durell said to him.

  “Now look, Cajun—”

  Durell returned to Freeling. “Could it be Chinese, though? Or Russian?”

  “Let us hope so.” Freeling spoke as if lecturing a class in bacteriology. “You can imagine the diplomatic furor that is apt to erupt in Washington and Tokyo. As for the virus at Hatashima, it seems to resemble Pearl Q-27, but we have no confirmation actually. The odds against this accident are very, very great. We have search planes looking for the ship, 626, right now. Perhaps the Pacific storm disabled her communications system. We will soon know.” Freeling tried a small smile, but it didn’t work. “Trying to prove the germ is not one of ours is like saying you have stopped beating your wife. You confess the possibility of guilt by denial. It is some fifty-two hours since the first outbreak at Hatashima. Perhaps 107 victims have died so far. Maybe 108, if Miss Kamuru is not found alive. The disease affects all ages and sexes. It is indiscriminate. We presume we can keep this quiet for another forty-eight hours. That is the time you have. We are sending over a team of CBW men—they should be here at dawn. You will work directly with me, however. You can contact me
through the Embassy, of course— through Mr. Cummings. As I said, we must prove the disease is not one of our making. I agree that we must save as many lives as possible. There is a chance we may do so.”

  '‘How?” Durell asked.

  “Find Miss Yoko Kamuru.”

  “Just because she is missing?”

  “She was ill with the disease. She was recovering—or slightly better—when last seen. Now she has vanished.” Freeling stood up. He was taller than Durell had supposed. “Listen and understand me, Durell. There is the smallest of chances that Miss Kamuru is not drowned off the beach, or lying dead among the dunes. There is a chance she may have actually recovered from Pearl Q-27.”

  Durell was silent.

  Cummings swore softly, plaintively.

  Freeling said, “If she has recovered—if—and she is hiding somewhere, frightened, perhaps—then she is a

  kind of Typhoid Mary in reverse. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “If, if through some peculiar body chemistry of her own, she contracted Pearl Q and recovered from it, then she is our only means of swifdy discovering an immunizing agent, a detoxification serum derived from the blood antibodies she may have built up.”

  Durell felt a chill. “I see.”

  Freeling said, “So you must find her. Dead or alive. Pray that she is alive, and only frightened and misguided. Find her before others do. The Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese will soon be looking for her. This cannot be kept secret for long. She may run and hide, not understanding her importance. You must be the first to find her, if she is alive. She is precious to us. And you must keep her alive. Our enemies may try to kill her, to prevent us from proving we are not at fault. If you can save her, if you can prove the canister is not ours, you will certainly get several medals, Durell.”

  “I don’t work for medals,” Durell said. “I’ll find her.”

  8

  "DURELL? Sam? Wait a moment."

  Durell halted in the entrance to the building. Beyond the doors he saw the rain still sluicing down over Tokyo. He shivered, but not from the damp cold. Melvin Cummings caught up with him and plucked at his sleeve.

  “Listen, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize until I heard Dr. Freeling talking—well, it just can’t be ours!”

  “I hope not.”

  Cummings’ round face crinkled. “Please—”

  Durell said, “Are you worried about public relations for State, or is it all those people up there, dying?”

  “Hell, Japan is an island. We can all die here!”

  “Afraid of it, Cummings?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Sure. But I’m thinking of how to stop it.”

  “We can’t. It’s all a—a horrible accident.” He plucked at Durell's sleeve. “What can you do?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Cummings suddenly looked sly. “Are you going to Hatashima?”

  “It seems necessary. Want to come along?”

  “Hell, no! I mean—well, as you say, they’re just dying up there. There’s no hope for them. You couldn’t survive either. Nobody can.”

  “Stop shaking, Cummings.”

  “I can’t help it. It’s cold out here.”

  “It’s cold everywhere right now. But there’s a chance of survival, you know.”

  “I ought to return to Washington,” Cummings said.

  “One person survived, we hope.” Durell was quiet. “Miss Yoko Kamuru may be alive.”

  “No, she’s dead. Or somebody got her.”

  “Then I’ll just have to get her back, won’t I?” Durell asked.

  Cummings was openly frightened. He whispered, “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”

  “That goes for me, too.”

  The peripatetic Miss Pruett was waiting in the back of Shinjo’s Chevrolet. She lit a cigarette for him, but he waved it away.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Cummings is frightened witless. What about you?”

  “I am, too.”

  “That’s honest, anyway,” he said.

  She said quietly, “It’s late. It’s almost two o’clock in the morning. What do you want to do?”

  “I need a charter plane, maybe from All Nippon Airways. They use Fokker Friendships, or maybe some old DC-3’s. Never mind the cost. Washington will okay the voucher. .We could probably drive to Sendai in four hours, but the roads are bad and it would take too long. We don’t have much time. I’ll want a car for hire up at Sendai. It will take two hours from there to get to the Kokusai Ohnaya—the inn where Bill was staying.”

  “No problem,” the girl said.

  “We may want to hire a fishing boat. Lots of islands off Hatashima.”

  “I understand. You want this right away?”

  “In an hour. How long have you ever gone without sleep, Liz?”

  Her profile looked good against the stream of rain on the car windows. “I’ve gone three nights sleepless in Vietnam,” she said. “I told you, I’m a registered nurse. But my specialty is surgery, not viruses. Yes, it was three nights once, up at the DMZ.”

  Durell remembered Freeling’s time limit of forty-eight hours. “This won’t take that long,” he said.

  9

  THERE was a small commercial hotel at the corner, with a blinking neon sign that read taishi grand. Beyond the hotel was a narrow street, running wet with rain. Facing it, low houses with upturned eaves were sheltered from the street by fences or blank walls. Durell walked through the rain to the opposite comer without meeting a soul. It was too late for the night people to be seeking their entertainment, too early for the workmen to be starting for their jobs. At the corner there were two more lanes forking right and left, and he followed Miss Pruett’s directions and counted the houses, because there were neither street signs nor numbers to guide him. None of the houses showed a light.

  The place he wanted was the fourth from the comer, approximately in the middle of the quiet lane. A high stone fence blocked almost all his view of the old Japanese house, except for its gentle, lovely roof line. It took only a moment to scale the wall and drop lightly down inside.

  He was in a small, jewel-like garden, dimly lit by the aura over Tokyo that was reflected from the low-hanging rain clouds. There was a small path curving to a comer where a mound of rocks and miniaturized trees created the illusion of a distant mountain. A small stream of water made a white arc down the face of the stones and formed a serpentine brook, and at the end of this were two stone lanterns, dark now, framing the entrance to a terrace under the sweeping overhang of the roof. Waxed paper screens, sheltered by the overhang, made a long decorative wall on this side of the house.

  He was not sure of what he was looking for. He might find nothing here in Yoko Kamuru’s house. It was obviously empty, closed during the time she had expected to be on holiday at Hatashima.

  The flowers in their beds looked black in the uncertain light, and there was a dark-leafed Japanese maple among thick peony bushes long shorn of their blossoms. He paused under the roof overhang and tried to visualize the girl, the artist, living here. Anything he could learn about Yoko might help him judge where she might go—if, indeed, she were still alive.

  He tested the sliding paper screens. They were all locked, but it was a simple matter to use a picklock on the heavy wooden door at one end of the sheltered walkway.

  In twenty seconds he stepped inside.

  There are things you can immediately learn from the way people keep their homes. Yoko Kamuru was no Japanese hippie, no sloppy Bohemian artist. A very subtle aura of perfume, of lingering incense, hovered in the dark air. The polished plank floors gleamed immaculately in the faint light seeping through the wall screens. The room felt cold, unheated for several days.

  He wondered if she had a housekeeper. There were low, delicate Japanese furniture, mat floor coverings, and a fading group of flowers in a cloisonne vase in the best tradition of ikebana, the special art
of flower arranging. He slipped out of his wet shoes before crossing the polished teak floor, and touched the blossoms. The petals were still relatively fresh. There was still water in the vase.

  Item: She had expected to come home soon.

  Item: She was a practical, well-organized woman, sensitive to beauty; a professional artist who knew that creative work demanded discipline, not the slapdash attitudes of the amateur.

  Durell moved across the room through an opening in the sliding screens. He thought he heard a faint click and paused, but it was not repeated. Nevertheless, he took his gun from his waistband and held it loosely in the fingers of his right hand, down at his side.

  The house was silent.

  Then he took a pencil flash from his outer breast pocket and played it over the disarray in this next room. It didn’t seem to belong to the same house. It was a bedroom, with a tatami mat and a hard pillow-roll. The closets, made by more sliding screens, had been opened; the clothes, some Western but mostly Japanese women’s things, had been turned inside out and then strewn helter-skelter on the polished floor. Durell felt a warning tingle along his nerve ends and he held his gun a bit tighter.

  There were books—or there had been—in low, waxed bookcases along one wall, and they had all been tom out and scattered on the floor along with the pawed-over clothes.

  He moved across the room silently in his stockinged feet and went through it to a covered walkway, where the rain had blown and made the hexagonal stepping-stones wet and shiny.

  He knew he was not alone here.

  A small, detached structure, like a miniature Shinto temple complete with a lacquered torii gate, stood open at the end of the covered walkway. The sliding panels had been pushed apart. Durell halted, waited. Nothing happened. He moved forward, then halted again. Rain made a soft patter on the roof over the walkway. The square, painted posts that supported the roof gleamed wetly with the steady rain. To his right and behind him was the small formal garden, an illusion of space, a dream of fields and mountains. It didn’t take up more than a few hundred square feet, but it was a perfect world in itself.