Beneath a Rising Sun Read online

  About Beneath a Rising Sun

  As the Allied forces fight to repel invaders in the Pacific, the Duffy and Macintosh clans face their greatest challenges at home.

  Sergeant Jessica Duffy relishes her work as a code breaker in MacArthur’s headquarters but is also secretly reporting on the Americans to the Prime Minister. When she uncovers treason at the highest levels, neither duty nor dishonour will stop her getting justice.

  Captain James Duffy, a decorated fighter pilot with the United States Marine Corps, is expected to wait out the war assisting the bond effort, helping to make movies that gloss over the tragic realities of combat. Despite his scars, he is desperate to return to the cockpit ... until a chance meeting gives him something new to fight for.

  Major David Macintosh has survived prison camps, torture and countless battles, but can he endure the machinations of his obsessive cousin, Sarah? Sarah is prepared to do anything to take over the family companies, and will destroy anyone who gets in her way.

  From the frontlines of the Pacific to the back lots of Hollywood, a new generation faces deadly missions, impossible choices and an inescapable family legacy.

  Contents

  Cover

  About Beneath a Rising Sun

  Dedication

  Family Tree

  Prologue

  PART ONE: Winter in the Southern Hemisphere, 1943

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  PART TWO: Springtime in the Southern Hemisphere, 1943

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Epilogue

  Author Notes

  Acknowledgements

  About Peter Watt

  Also by Peter Watt

  Excerpts from emails sent to Peter Watt

  Copyright page

  For Naomi

  For her love and support

  Prologue

  Sydney, Australia, 1943

  Lieutenant Tony Caccamo, a former member of the New York Police Department and now an officer in the American military police, was about to kill a man in cold blood. He could feel his body tremble – not so much with fear, although he felt afraid, but with extreme apprehension. He was about to assassinate a high-ranking British officer.

  The semi-automatic army-issue .45 pistol hung loosely in his hand as he stood in the darkness watching the front doors of the harbourside mansion. He had been given his orders back in General MacArthur’s HQ in Brisbane, and his commanding officer had informed him that the man he now waited to kill was a dangerous traitor, in league with the Japanese. When Tony had questioned why the Australian authorities had not detained the suspect, he had been informed that without irrefutable evidence the Brit was too well connected to British aristocracy for that to happen. He was slated for a position in signals intelligence, which would give him access to the Allies’ deepest secrets, and this could not be allowed to happen.

  Tony had been given forged papers and was posing as a Canadian merchant seaman, which had allowed him access to the city’s less salubrious society over the last couple of months, giving him an opportunity to track his prey.

  His target, Lieutenant Colonel Albert Ulverstone, had just inherited his family title with the death of his esteemed father, and that now made him the new Lord Ulverstone. The Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, had previously interfered in MI6 investigations into suspected traitors amongst British aristocracy, and this left only one option for Britain’s most important ally, the Americans. What was one more death in a war claiming millions of lives?

  Despite the cold autumn night, sweat clung to Tony’s skin under his rough garb. He had been tracking the British lord’s movements around the city and had noted that he was a regular visitor to the home of a very wealthy Aussie entrepreneur, Sir George Macintosh. Ulverstone was a creature of habit and usually dined here at Sir George’s home on Monday evenings. He would be vulnerable when he stepped out of the house into the darkness to walk to his private sedan parked twenty yards away in the driveway. It was then that Tony would close the distance and fire straight into the man’s head. The .45 bullet was known for its massive impact, and the second shot into the man’s chest would ensure his death.

  Tony could feel the sweat on the palms of his hands. He could hear the distant clatter of bells on buoys in the harbour and a dog barking somewhere in the distance, but little else disturbed the silence of the night. He had planned his escape, and if all went well the assassination of the British officer would forever remain an unsolved murder case for the Aussie police.

  The front door opened and Tony could see Ulverstone framed in the doorway, Sir George Macintosh standing behind him. He could hear the two of them exchanging pleasantries. Tony waited for the door to close so that there would be no witnesses. Ulverstone was already walking to his car and Tony could hear the crunch of fine gravel underfoot. He gripped the pistol, raising it ready for action, and stepped from the shadows.

  He was halfway to Ulverstone and now exposed in the open. Within seconds he would be on top of the British officer.

  Suddenly Tony was aware that the door to the house had opened again and a voice called, ‘Old chap, you forgot your hat.’

  Tony froze. In the open he knew he could be seen and without hesitating he turned and sprinted into the darkness.

  *

  ‘Good God, man!’ Sir George yelled to his friend. ‘I think someone was about to do you a mischief. That fellow, running away over there.’

  Albert Ulverstone spun around and just caught sight of a man disappearing out of the driveway onto the street. He looked back to Sir George Macintosh still standing in the doorway with a hat in his hand.

  ‘I could have sworn that chappie had a gun,’ Sir George said in a shocked tone, and Ulverstone felt a shiver of terror. The first thing that came to his mind was that the man was an agent of the British secret service organisation, MI6, or perhaps even the Secret Operations Executive, the deadly covert organisation of the British wartime government. Ulverstone knew that he would have to take precautions if that was so.

  *

  Many miles west of Sydney, on the other side of the Great Dividing Range, a life had just been born into a world at war. On the outskirts of the large country town of Goulburn, the weakened mother lay back against the soft pillows. The farmhouse was large and comfortable, and a fire flickered gently in the bedroom hearth.

  Sarah Huntley – nee Macintosh – had come to the property, one of the many in her family’s estate, to await the birth of her first child. She had done so reluctantly, as this had meant leaving the family businesses in the hands of her brother, Donald Macintosh. The birth was three weeks premature, but the child
was delivered safely by the experienced midwife.

  ‘You have a grand-looking boy,’ the elderly midwife said, holding up the baby who was already bawling his anger at being removed from the warmth of the womb. ‘Your husband will be proud of his son.’

  Sarah bent her head forward to see the life she had brought into the world. He was slimy and wrinkled, and she sighed as she fell back against the pillows. All that pain and time away from her beloved companies to produce something more alien than human, she thought. What she could not tell the midwife was that the child was not that of her husband, Charles Huntley, but that of her cousin, David Macintosh.

  The midwife went about the business of cutting the umbilical cord and cleaning the baby before placing him in a swaddling cloth beside his mother. ‘Do you have a name for the wee one?’ she asked, perusing Sarah for any possible signs of postnatal fever or injury.

  ‘Not as yet,’ Sarah answered.

  ‘I will have the doctor call in tomorrow morning to carry out a routine examination,’ the midwife said as she packed her medical bag.

  The woman left and the housemaid, a young woman in her late teens, stepped into the bedroom. Her face brightened at the sight of the baby.

  ‘Mrs Carey said that you have a boy, Mrs Huntley,’ the girl said with a wide smile. ‘What is his name?’

  ‘Michael,’ Sarah said in a weary voice.

  ‘If I may ask, is there any special reason for the name?’ the maid asked, going to the baby beside her employer.

  ‘To be honest,’ Sarah said with a frown. ‘It just came to mind a few seconds ago. I would like you to remove the baby to your room tonight, so that I am able to get a good night’s sleep,’ she instructed, and the maid willingly scooped the baby up into her arms and took him away.

  The logs burned away in the bedroom fireplace, casting eerie shadows on the wall. Sarah began to doze off but woke almost immediately with a sudden wave of terror. She found that she was staring at a shadow of a man with a spear dancing on the walls. She tried to scream but no sound came out. For reasons she could not explain, the name Wallarie filled her head. She had heard about Aboriginal corroborees, and she felt as though she was no longer in the sleepy pastoral village of Goulburn but much further north in the arid country of the brigalow scrub plains, in the presence of an ancient people her family had massacred three-quarters of a century before.

  A burning log slipped and the Aboriginal dancer was gone, leaving her wide-eyed and in a lather of sweat. The words of her father, Sir George Macintosh, echoed in the silence of the room: ‘There is a blackfella curse on our family.’

  *

  My name is Wallarie and some of you know me. I am a Darambal man of the Nerambura clan. I am long gone from your earthly world, but sometimes the old ones let me return to the places I once hunted for the kangaroo and goanna. I return because there is a curse on a couple of whitefella clans for what they did to my people.

  If you go to the bumbil tree on a whitefella place they call Glen View and sit in its shade, and if you listen to the sound of the wind blowing across the parched brigalow plains, you might hear me whisper in your ear the story of the Duffys and Macintoshes.

  Maybe if you look up into the blue skies you will see a great eagle drifting above. That will be me watching you in the shade of the bumbil tree.

  Maybe I am not real and you will hear nothing of this story.

  PART ONE

  Winter in the Southern Hemisphere

  1943

  One

  Sergeant Jessica Duffy quickly scribbled down the essentials of the decoded Japanese signal. The Allied report had been transmitted from an aerial reconnaissance of the Bismarck Sea north of the island of New Guinea. She could see a picture emerging, but it was not her job to analyse information into intelligence.

  The American signals intelligence office in General MacArthur’s Brisbane HQ was a hive of activity and manned by predominantly American service personnel. A year earlier Jessica, a sergeant in the WAAAF, had been appointed as a liaison officer in the highly sensitive area of codes and intelligence. She had top secret clearance and had come to impress the American colonel in charge of her section with her understanding of the strategic implications of the signals that passed across her desk.

  As she worked away, Jessica became aware of the heavy scent of cigar smoke: her boss, a gruff, slightly overweight man who never seemed to be without his trademark cigar, was standing behind her.

  ‘What do you think it all means, Sergeant Duffy?’ he asked with his Texan drawl.

  ‘I am not an intelligence analyst, sir,’ Jessica said, turning in her swivel chair.

  ‘You have a good instinct for what you see crossing your desk, Sergeant Duffy,’ the colonel said, standing over her. ‘Give me your best guess.’

  ‘I think that the Japs are planning to reinforce Lae and Salamaua,’ Jessica said. ‘It seems obvious from what we know of their naval formations of transport ships, escorting war ships and a heavy aircraft cover to protect them.’

  ‘And in your analysis, what does that mean?’ he continued.

  ‘If they succeed,’ Jessica said, ‘to put it in military terms, we could be up the creek without a paddle.’

  The colonel snorted a laugh through the cigar clenched between his teeth. ‘Mac has to dislodge the Japs from any plans he has to go after the little yellow bastards, on his route across the north of New Guinea, on his way to the retaking of the Philippines,’ he said. ‘A battle in the Bismarck Sea will decide the outcome of the Japs’ future in this part of the world. Well done, Sergeant Duffy.’

  With that he walked away, leaving Jessica to reflect on the picture she could see emerging from the flow of information from both the enemy and their own sources. She had already calculated that the battle in the Bismarck would prove to be critical and, if lost to the enemy, could cause the war in the Pacific region to drag on a lot longer. Since the American naval victory at Midway Island over a year earlier, the Japanese defeat by the Australians at Milne Bay and the subsequent victory by the Americans at Guadalcanal, the Japanese had been forced to stop advancing and instead consolidate the territory they already occupied. However, it had come at a terrible cost in Allied lives as the Japanese chose to die to a man rather than surrender.

  Jessica returned her attention to the pile of communications forms on her desk, searching for those that needed to be transmitted to RAAF HQ for action. When she’d first started working in the Brisbane HQ she’d caused quite a stir in the male-dominated intelligence office. She was a beautiful young woman and her olive skin and jet-black hair gave a hint of her Aboriginal blood. These days everyone was too consumed by the urgency of decoding the Japanese radio intercepts to pay much attention to her. Besides, her thoughts were with Lieutenant Tony Caccamo, a friend who had been mysteriously absent from the department since Christmas. Tony seemed to be some kind of troubleshooter for the colonel’s office and she worried about where he was and what he might be doing.

  Tony was not the only one living a life of subterfuge. Jessica had been asked by Prime Minister Curtin himself to spy on the Americans, or at least to ensure they were not withholding information from their Australian allies. It was the patriotic thing to do, Jessica knew that, but if her American colleagues ever found out about it, she would likely disappear without any questions being asked. It was a disconcerting thought.

  *

  In a small obscure cafe of lino-covered floor and well-worn artificial marble topped tables in Sydney’s central business district, two well-dressed men met and ordered tea and sandwiches for lunch. The younger of the two was in his mid-twenties, tall and good-looking. His tailored suit had cost more than the man sitting opposite him would earn in a month. The older man was in his mid-forties and had the pallid complexion of an office worker.

  The cafe was empty except for two young sailors sitting in a corner, tal
king loudly and consuming meat pies covered in tomato sauce. They paid little attention to the two men sitting by the doorway.

  ‘Good to catch up, old chap,’ the older man said. ‘Canberra feels that you are doing a good job in lieu of your brother-in-law, Charles.’

  ‘How is Charles faring?’ Donald Macintosh asked as the waitress, a young girl barely fifteen, placed a pot of tea and two cups and saucers on their table. She withdrew before the man Donald knew as Allan Saxby answered.

  ‘Your brother-in-law is doing well,’ Saxby answered. ‘I believe he is flying a Beaufighter out of Milne Bay. I have been informed that your sister, Sarah, has made you an uncle.’

  ‘Not much you don’t know, Mr Saxby,’ Donald said, turning the pot to mix the tea leaves which he suspected would be few and far between thanks to severe rationing.

  ‘Well, we know just a little more thanks to our contact in Mac’s HQ in Brisbane,’ Saxby replied, glancing at the noisy young sailors on the other side of the room. ‘We would like you to go up to Brisbane and have a chat with Sergeant Duffy as soon as possible. The PM is concerned about this thing in the Bismarck Sea. He is not sure if Mac is keeping him fully informed about affairs to our north.’

  ‘From what I have been able to glean it is just another military engagement,’ Donald began pouring the coloured hot water into the cups as the waitress returned with a small jug of milk. He glanced up at her. ‘Do you have any sugar?’

  ‘Sorry, mister,’ she said, placing the jug on the table, ‘our ration ran out. But for two bob I might be able to lay my hands on some.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Donald responded. ‘We will take our tea without sugar.’

  ‘Ah, it is good to see that enterprise still thrives in these difficult times,’ Saxby sighed when the waitress had left to fetch their sandwiches.

  ‘You mean the black market,’ Donald growled.

  ‘Not that the family of Sir George Macintosh would know about such shortages,’ Saxby said in a sly tone. ‘Your government contracts supplying our American friends have proved to be very lucrative.’