Eden Read online

  Fuji was on the final leg of his mission and his meeting with a successful contact in Port Moresby would reward him with a place in the navy aboard one of the mighty battleships of the Pacific Fleet. But Fuji was feeling extremely nervous. Not for the upcoming contact with the Moresby-based agent but for the meeting with his father. Fuji might not fear death but he did fear his father’s opinion of him. At least now he had returned to the land of his birth as a warrior of the greatest navy on the Pacific Ocean. Surely his father would be proud of him.

  Fuji’s father’s house was a ramshackle arrangement of logs and thatch built just above the shoreline. Around the house were the framework slips for his small boats, highly prized by the Europeans for their tough sea-worthiness. Wood shavings and timber off-cuts lay scattered in the yard where hens wandered, pecking at the grubs and insects plentiful in the surrounding rainforests.

  The walk to Isokihi the Boat Builder’s premises had taken Fuji all day and he arrived at dusk to see a tiny glimmer of light from the lowest window of the bungalow. His father’s house had not changed in the seven years he had been away, Fuji thought with just a touch of relief. His memories of its crude but comfortable interior were pleasant. He remembered his mother as she silently went about tending to the house and his father, more with love than the subservience traditionally expected of a good Japanese wife.

  Fuji took a deep breath. ‘Honourable Father,’ he called as he stood outside the hut, and after a silence that seemed to last forever his father emerged from the low door to stand before his son.

  Fuji bowed respectfully but noticed that his father remained standing not fully recognising his son. The squat, solidly built, balding boat builder was a direct contrast to his slimmer son who had inherited his mother’s family’s physical characteristics. ‘May I enter?’ Fuji asked.

  His father gave a slight nod of his head, turned his back and was followed inside by his son. The first sight Fuji had inside the house was of his mother and her poorly concealed expression of maternal joy at seeing her beloved son. Fuji bowed to his mother but she disregarded protocol to rush to her son and hold him, babbling words of love and concern. ‘You are too thin, my son,’ she said as he disengaged himself with some embarrassment at her lack of dignity.

  ‘I am well,’ he replied formally, glancing sideways at his father.

  Ignoring his son, Isokihi lowered himself behind a traditional, low-set table and picked up his chopsticks. It was a difficult moment and Fuji sensed something was wrong. He felt awkward, as if he were once again a little boy in trouble.

  ‘I know why you are here,’ his father said as he raised a piece of food to his lips. ‘You are spying.’

  Fuji was stunned by his father’s perceptiveness. How could he know? As if reading his son’s thoughts, Isokihi continued. ‘I have heard from the natives I trade with that a young Japanese man was travelling between the islands talking about one day rebelling against the Australians. They said he could speak fluent English when needed and that he was a Papuan like themselves.’

  ‘I am a warrior for the Emperor,’ Fuji answered passionately. ‘My mission is to prepare the way for the conquest of the barbarians who have enslaved the black men and brought loss of face to our family in this country. I do not apologise for my task. I thought my return would bring joy to you. Or is it that you are no longer a true son of Japan?’

  Isokihi slowly placed the chopsticks on his bowl and Fuji felt a stab of fear. Although he was younger and fitter he still had an instinctive dread of his father’s anger. He stood tensely, wondering what his father would do.

  ‘I saw war long before you were born,’ Isokihi said quietly. ‘As a very young sailor in the Emperor’s navy fighting against the Russian fleet at Tsushima in 1905 I saw death in every form. And then I returned to a country dying from famine whilst we were fed because we had done the Emperor’s will. That is why I left my country to seek peace and prosperity for your mother and I here. Do you think war will make the world a better place?’

  Fuji was stunned by his father’s revelation. Never once in his life had he believed that his father was anything but completely loyal to the Emperor. His father’s confession was akin to treason and brought dishonour to the family name. Looking to his mother Fuji saw only grief in her face and realised that, through her silence, she too must harbour the same treacherous sentiments as his father. ‘I will leave your house,’ Fuji said bitterly. ‘And I will never return until I come as a conqueror to teach the barbarian Europeans respect for our empire.’

  ‘I will not inform the Australians of your activities,’ Isokihi said in a slightly conciliatory tone. ‘Your mother will prepare some food for your journey – wherever it may take you.’

  ‘I do not need your food,’ Fuji spat as he turned to walk away. ‘You are both dead to me,’ he added, but he could not bear to look at the pain in his mother’s face lest he break down and cry. This was not the way of Bushido. It seemed that his father had adopted the weak and effeminate sentimental ways of the barbarians and Fuji refused to be part of it. Slamming the door he stormed out into the night.

  Isokihi hung his head, squeezing back the tears threatening to unleash themselves in his wife’s presence. How could his son not see that this was their country now? Had he not been born on the very soil of the great island to the south of Japan? The boat builder still loved the land of his birth but he had been away for so long that he no longer felt its clutch on him. How ironic that he should side with Papua when his son, a native of the land, had chosen to serve a country he had not visited until seven years ago.

  Fuji stumbled away from the house, past the boatyard on the beach. The tears could not be restrained and he was glad that no one could see him crying. But his tears were not for learning that his parents had sided with the barbarians as much as for losing a father who he so desperately had wanted to bring honour to. He had been rejected once again, and his enlistment in the navy six years earlier had not brought him the recognition he so desperately sought from his peers and superiors either. As he had not been born in Japan or one of her territories they had looked down upon him as almost a barbarian himself. He was a foreigner with Japanese blood and was forced to work his way up to his current lowly rank through being the best at everything he did. At least that had been recognised. This dangerous mission would enhance his prestige, and tonight he would sleep in the jungle, having been trained in the toughest military schools of Japan. On the morrow he would make contact with the most important agent in Papua – a man of considerable wealth and power, accepted without suspicion by the Australians.

  Fuji found a stream and washed away the night. Insects had bitten him and the ever-present threat of malaria was in the Japanese sailor’s mind. But it was a risk he knew he must take if he were to complete his mission before returning to Japan.

  He trudged along a track he knew so well from his childhood and found the place where he would make contact with the agent. It was a bungalow-style home with wide verandahs and beautifully kept tropical gardens – a private, unobtrusive house to outside eyes but still one that, through its lack of unpretentiousness, betrayed obvious wealth.

  Outside the house an old Papuan man, wearing only the traditional white cotton skirt known as a lap-lap, was tending the gardens. His black skin was criss-crossed with numerous scars, indicating a hard life. The gardener caught Fuji watching him and glared back, shouting in pidgin, ‘Yu rausim.’

  Fuji ignored his demand and, striding forward, snarled, ‘I have come to speak with Kwong Yu Sen, you ignorant black bastard.’ The dishevelled young man’s fluent English startled the gardener and he took a step backwards.

  Before the Papuan gardener could react any further a slim, composed Chinese man, in his late middle age and wearing an immaculate white suit and matching hat, rose from a cane chair on the verandah to see what the commotion was about. He stopped when he saw Fuji and frowned. ‘Is that you Fuji Komine?’ he asked.

  ‘It is, Mr Kwo
ng,’ Fuji replied. ‘I have come to see you in private about matters of importance.’

  Sen gestured for Fuji to follow him inside the house. ‘I would never have guessed in a million years that it would be you who would make contact,’ he said wearily as if the young man’s visit had already tired him. ‘It was rumoured when you disappeared from Papua all those years ago that you had been working for that murderer, O’Leary. But your meeting with me has to be more than coincidental in light of the news I have received from my German masters.’

  Fuji glanced around to ensure that they were alone. The house was clean and comfortable, with expensive European furniture and adornments to make life pleasurable.

  ‘You are to report to me from now on,’ Fuji said less than politely having no reason to make the Chinese merchant feel comfortable. ‘I doubt that there is any reason to elaborate on why it is me who you will be working for.’

  Sen slumped into a chair. He had never wanted to return to Papua from Singapore a year earlier but his German controllers in the intelligence service had ordered him back. There was no choice in the matter. The Nazis controlling Europe would eventually win the war and hunt him down if he were to finally confess to the Australian authorities his role in spying on them in the Great War. Either way he was a doomed man. Had it only concerned himself he may have considered telling all he knew, but he had a family now and to do so would put their lives in dire jeopardy. ‘Do you not fear being recognised in Papua?’ he asked.

  Fuji broke into a rare smile. ‘It is a risk I must take if I am to complete my mission for the Emperor.’

  ‘We are not at war with Japan,’ Sen countered. ‘Why would the Germans want me to work for you, when it is they who are at war with the Australians?’

  ‘I am not here to indulge in strategic politics with you,’ Fuji replied. ‘Your country is at war with Japan and yet you live in the safe haven of Australian territory. Does not that concern you?’

  Sen rubbed his face with a clean handkerchief. He felt physically ill at the young Japanese man’s presence and at what it meant for his future. It meant that the time had come to once again betray those who trusted him. The hardest part of this betrayal was having to work with an enemy that was really an enemy of his own people, the Chinese. Sen had heard of the terrible atrocities committed by the Japanese troops in Manchuria, Nanking and other places on the Chinese mainland which they had conquered and occupied. His German controllers had ensured that Sen’s family remained in Singapore with veiled threats of violence to them if he did not fully cooperate. To see this arrogant young Japanese standing in his house directing him to obey orders was almost more than he could bear. But bear it he must, if he were to retain all that he had achieved for his family.

  ‘What am I to do?’ he asked Fuji.

  ‘You will receive a cargo very soon from Hong Kong. In that cargo will be a crate marked as dried ginger. In the crate will be a radio and instructions on how to operate it. Your code name will be Krait.’ Sen winced. The krait was a small but highly venomous snake found in Asia. ‘The rest will be told to you when the time is right.’

  ‘Is that all for now?’ Sen asked, looking up at Fuji standing over him.

  ‘No,’ Fuji answered. ‘I will take a wash and some food before I depart. Then you will not see me unless I request you to do so.’

  Leading Seaman Fuji Komine had completed his mission and its success would be judged by his superiors. But he knew what he had done was not unique. All over the Pacific islands and Asia where the Europeans and Americans had strategic interests, other young Japanese men were quietly going about similar tasks of espionage. The secondary stages of sabotage and subversion would be activated when Japan went to war with the Pacific powers. Although Fuji did not know when this would be, he did know it was as inevitable as the sun rising each day and he knew from his own intelligence department that even the Americans were aware of this, although they wondered not only when but where war would come to them.

  TWO

  Europe had fallen. Only Britain held out in its island fortress. The war to end all wars had failed and the armistice that had been signed in 1918 had only sown the seeds for future conflict. Its inevitability was apparent to the tall aristocratic man who stared out over the tranquil, tropical waters of the Papuan bay. Why had the Allied powers not realised that they could not destroy a nation as proud as Germany with their crushing demands of the Versailles Treaty, Paul Mann brooded.

  So much had occurred in his life since that dreadful third day of September 1939 when the Australian government had declared war on Paul’s homeland. Within half a day the local sergeant of police had come to the plantation with his revolver drawn and had demanded uncomfortably that Paul, his wife Karin and sixteen-year-old daughter Angelika go with him in a truck to Port Moresby to be interned as possible enemy aliens. Sergeant Ian Groves had appeared uncomfortable with his duty as over the years that Paul had lived in Papua, they had become friends. ‘Just in case you try to escape,’ he had said sheepishly when Paul had asked disdainfully if the firearm was necessary.

  ‘Paul?’ The voice of his wife called to him from above the beach where he stood watching the gently hissing Coral Sea sweep the sand to the edge of his boots. ‘Are you ready to come inside for dinner?’

  Paul Mann turned to gaze up to her. ‘I will come soon,’ he replied and resumed his solitary staring across the Papuan Gulf. Germany was conquering Europe with an unimaginable speed when Paul compared it to his own experience in the stalemate of trench warfare. Now a new generation had taken over and his very own son was wearing the uniform of the men he had once fought. Karl had resigned his job as a kiap – a patrol officer in Papua – to enlist in the Australian Army only weeks after the outbreak of hostilities. There had been a terrible argument between father and son in the house that had seen so many good times for the family who had sailed from Germany over twenty years earlier to take up residence on this tropical frontier. Paul had raged at Karl that he could not possibly consider enlisting in an army that might confront the men of his birthplace on the battlefield. To do so was akin to treachery.

  ‘I have lived longer in Papua and Australia than I ever did in Germany,’ Karl had responded calmly. ‘This land is my country now – not a Germany under that lunatic, Adolf Hitler.’

  Paul had turned away from his son who stood like a young giant on the front verandah of their house behind the beach. The fronds of tall coconut trees waved in a gentle breeze. ‘You are German,’ he had reiterated stubbornly. ‘You are forever linked to where your roots are.’

  ‘But my friends are Australian. Your very best friend, Uncle Jack, is an Australian. I know you two are as inseparable as brothers despite everything that happened up until 1918. Can’t you see, Papa, that it is where our hearts may be that counts more than where we may have been born. We have no choice in where we may be born but can choose where we want to live. I love this country. Angelika was born here and for that alone I am prepared to fight anyone who may want to take it all from us. Hitler is out to conquer the world and he will not stop with Europe. He may even decide that New Guinea be returned to Germany in an attempt to resurrect the old empire of the Kaisers.’

  Secretly, Paul had to concede what his son had said had merit. But over-riding all his son’s arguments was Paul’s self-identification as a German. It was something he had spent four horrific years in the trenches of the Great War fighting for, losing his best friends, and taking to the grave the faces and memories of a generation squandered on Europe’s mud-and-barbed-wire landscape.

  ‘I am asking you one last time if you will remain in Papua in your present job,’ Paul had begged his son. ‘It is not your war.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ Karl answered with pain visibly etched in his handsome face. ‘Uncle Jack has said he can get me into the army with a commission.’

  ‘Jack Kelly,’ Paul had exploded. ‘Your Uncle Jack has been putting these wild ideas in your head?’

  Ka
rl had hung his head at his father’s wrath. ‘Uncle Jack signed up in the last war – even though his mother was German,’ the young man had offered feebly. ‘He must have had to think hard about that decision then.’

  Paul had felt betrayed by his best friend. Jack knew the horror of war and yet he was obviously encouraging Karl to join up, which made the man no real friend if he was playing God with Karl’s life. ‘Damn Jack Kelly to hell,’ he had sworn. ‘He will never step foot in my house again.’

  That had been almost a year earlier and Paul still felt the distant echo of regret at his anger but in his stubbornness he refused to make contact with the man who was as close as his brother. He knew that his wife and daughter did not agree with him. Jack was a part of their lives in ways only women could understand. He was family, as was his son Lukas, and Karin had loved the boy as her own. She had been his surrogate mother and did not discriminate against him because he was not of their blood. Paul had come to realise her stance in the matter from her cold silences when they were together. But he had his pride and had made his statement. Much as he missed his friend, Jack Kelly was damned to hell for helping Karl enlist in an army destined to confront Germany. The brief Mann family internment had not prejudiced Karl’s enlistment and subsequent commission into an infantry battalion. Even now Paul’s son was somewhere overseas – his whereabouts undisclosed by the censorship his son was forced to impose on himself in his letters home. About all Paul could ascertain was that his son was possibly in the Middle East.