Beside A Burning Sea Part 29

THE FOUR j.a.pANESE WARSHIPS cut through the debris-laden water with the same ease as swans gliding across a pond. At the front of the convoy was one of j.a.pan's newest and most advanced heavy cruisers. Following the zigzagging path of the cruiser were a transport ship and two smaller destroyers. The transport ship carried more than a thousand soldiers, as well as antiaircraft guns, ammunition, armored personnel carriers, and everything necessary to fashion a runway in the middle of a tropical jungle.

From the bow of the cruiser, Katsuo Kawamoto, known to Roger by the code name of Edo, stared through binoculars toward their destination. As he gazed at the sea-which was littered with branches, coconuts, and other debris from the typhoon-Edo speculated as to how the past few days had affected the American spy. Aboard the cruiser, things certainly hadn't been easy. The typhoon had forced every ship in the area to seek calmer waters, and even far from the storm's eye, the seas had been ferocious. Adding to their troubles, two days later the convoy had come upon a similar-sized group of American warships. The resulting battle had been short but intense, not ending until an American light cruiser and a destroyer were sunk. Though Edo's countrymen had been victorious, the ship that carried him and his ten handpicked men was. .h.i.t by several sh.e.l.ls.

Turning around to eye the cruiser's superstructure, Edo was impressed by how much damage had already been repaired. Though some of the buckled and torn metal would remain untouched until they returned to Yokohama, the legacy of the battle was much less than it had been. The cruiser's giant guns were all intact and, even to Edo, looked rather menacing.

Fortunately, none of Edo's men had been harmed during the encounter. He'd selected them himself from a group of elite Imperial Navy paratroopers who'd been aboard the transport ship. Though Edo doubted he'd need so many talented men, the survivors from Benevolence Benevolence had to be dealt with as efficiently as possible. The issue of how to handle the Americans had troubled Edo for the past week, and hadn't been settled until his superior in Tokyo had taken the dilemma away from him, deciding that it would be best if the survivors were eliminated. After all, a handful of Americans telling the world about how their hospital ship was torpedoed wouldn't benefit the emperor-regardless of whether the Americans had broken international law by filling the ship with extra fuel and munitions. had to be dealt with as efficiently as possible. The issue of how to handle the Americans had troubled Edo for the past week, and hadn't been settled until his superior in Tokyo had taken the dilemma away from him, deciding that it would be best if the survivors were eliminated. After all, a handful of Americans telling the world about how their hospital ship was torpedoed wouldn't benefit the emperor-regardless of whether the Americans had broken international law by filling the ship with extra fuel and munitions.

Killing the Americans made Edo's task easier, and he'd been pleased to receive the orders. However, he hadn't been as satisfied with the command to eliminate Ronin. He'd worked with the American spy on several occasions, and while Edo admitted that Ronin was somewhat unstable, the man had served him well enough. Regrettably, the problem of somehow reintroducing Ronin to his countrymen as the sole survivor of Benevolence Benevolence was inherently risky. Too many questions would be asked of such a survivor, and it was possible that the Americans would realize that Ronin had betrayed them and would set about converting him into a double agent. And Edo had to admit that contemplating the future motives of his operative wasn't something he cared to envision. was inherently risky. Too many questions would be asked of such a survivor, and it was possible that the Americans would realize that Ronin had betrayed them and would set about converting him into a double agent. And Edo had to admit that contemplating the future motives of his operative wasn't something he cared to envision.

Putting the field gla.s.ses against his eyes once more, Edo looked ahead. Once Ronin contacted him a final time, the particulars of their meeting would be arranged. Then it would be a simple matter to follow Ronin into the jungle and eliminate the survivors. Their bodies would be burned, and after Ronin was killed, no American would ever know for certain what had happened to Benevolence Benevolence. The ship would have simply disappeared.

As Edo scanned the sea, he thought about how he'd directed and manipulated Ronin over the past two years. The man certainly had his talents. He was bright, forward thinking, fearless, and physically formidable. Of course, Edo had always detected a certain kind of madness within him. And this madness ensured that his usefulness would be relatively short-lived. But the destruction of Benevolence Benevolence and its secret cargo had made headquarters happy. Not only had precious supplies been destroyed, but a new American ship had been sunk. Edo didn't care that and its secret cargo had made headquarters happy. Not only had precious supplies been destroyed, but a new American ship had been sunk. Edo didn't care that Benevolence Benevolence had been a hospital ship. In his mind it was an enemy vessel. It took steel and men and time to make. And now that it had been destroyed, the Americans would have to make another-if they wished to draw upon such valuable resources. had been a hospital ship. In his mind it was an enemy vessel. It took steel and men and time to make. And now that it had been destroyed, the Americans would have to make another-if they wished to draw upon such valuable resources.

Edo had spent much of the war in an underground bunker in Tokyo. He'd created complex schemes that aided the emperor in his early victories. Through secret messages and code-ridden commands, Edo had killed hundreds of men and women. But he'd never killed by his own hand, and a large part of him yearned to do so. After all, wasn't it considered an honor to see an enemy's blood upon one's skin? How could he let the entire war pa.s.s without pulling a trigger and watching someone crumple before him?

His fingers tracing the contours of his holstered pistol, Edo debated how he could put himself in the best position to kill. Should he shoot one of the nurses or doctors they were likely to find? Would such a death give him any satisfaction? Or should he kill Ronin? Should he watch the man's face reflect bewilderment, then pain, then peace? Or, better yet, should he shoot several Americans?

Musing over such questions the way a mathematician ponders a complex theorem, Edo continued to create a plan for his arrival on the island. Only much later, when all the details of the next few days had been finalized within his mind, did Edo return to his cramped quarters. There he glanced at a photograph of his wife and children. He cleaned trace amounts of dirt from beneath his fingernails with the tip of a dagger. And he then withdrew his pistol from its holster and pulled slightly and longingly on the trigger.

THE HILLTOP PROVIDED an almost un.o.bstructed view of the entire island. Though three other distant rises were of greater height, these outcrop-pings only obscured small slices of the sea. After handing the binoculars to Ratu, Scarlet immediately held a giant leaf above her head to shield herself from the sun. "Do you see anything?" she asked, wondering if perhaps his young eyes could discern something she could not.

"I see everything!" Ratu replied excitedly.

Jake smiled and sat down near Scarlet, removing a long blade of gra.s.s from his teeth. "I reckon that's what our preacher said once. That G.o.d saw everything."

"I'm not G.o.d, Big Jake. But I tell you, I see everything."

Jake looked about the hill, curious as to why Scarlet wanted to be alone atop the island. "A nice little day, ain't it, miss?" he asked.

"If you like the sun and heat, yes, I'd say so."

Liking such things, but seeing that she did not, Jake just smiled. "Has anything caught your eye?"

"Some beautiful birds, but that's about it. I look for ships and I look for birds. And I see a lot of birds."

Jake squinted against the sun, his gaze dropping to the trees below. "We don't see many birds on the farm." Then, he added with a grin, "My daddy thinks they're trespa.s.sers."

"Trespa.s.sers?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Does he shoot them?"

"He did for a time."

"How terrible. Did you?"

Jake scratched his chin, which was filling with whiskers. "I know how to shoot a gun, miss. And on occasion I did eat pheasant and quail and turkey. But I just shot them for dinner, so that my mama had something to fill her pots. Otherwise, I liked watching them. Especially waterfowl."

"I used to feed pigeons with my grandmother," Scarlet said. "In Central Park."

"That sounds real nice."

"It was."

"And now you sit here and watch parrots?"

"It beats sitting in the cave. I can't breathe in that place."

Jake smiled at her and turned to Ratu. "I reckon we should get back. We still got some fish to catch."

"The fish aren't going anywhere, Big Jake," Ratu replied.

"But the day is. Why, sunset ain't but a few hours away. And if we don't catch something for dinner, it'll be like showing up at a barn raising with no hammer."

"What's a barn raising?" Ratu asked, lowering the binoculars. "I tell you, you never make any b.l.o.o.d.y sense to me, Big Jake. Does he make any sense to you, Miss Scarlet?"

She smiled. "He does."

"Do people just speak differently in America?" Ratu asked. "Do they say things like barn raising barn raising for no reason?" for no reason?"

"People enjoy using expressions," she answered. "It keeps things from getting boring."

Ratu handed her the binoculars. "Keeps things from being boring? Things like having our ship sunk, a typhoon almost killing us, and planes blowing up? That's crazy, I tell you. You're not making any more sense than Big Jake."

"Can you do me a favor?" Scarlet asked, knowing that Ratu liked such tasks.

"What?"

"Can you tell the captain that I've seen no ships today?"

"But he knows that because you haven't signaled him."

"But you can still tell him. It won't hurt to have you tell him, will it?"

Ratu rose to his feet. "I'll tell him. Should I say anything else? I'll be a good messenger, I promise. I'm his first lieutenant, you know."

She smiled. "That will be fine for now."

"You ain't got a hankering for anything from below, miss?" Jake asked as he stood up.

"I'm fine, Jake. But thank you."

Jake and Ratu said good-bye and started to descend the steep hill. Jake watched Ratu recklessly hurry forward. Several times he stumbled and almost fell. Jake was about to tell him to be careful when Ratu suddenly stopped and turned in his direction. "What's America like?" he asked. "Is it a place I should someday visit?"

Holding Ratu's elbow in an effort to keep him from falling, Jake said, "Well, imagine you was an ant, and you had this here whole island to explore. I reckon you wouldn't see much of it, would you?"

"Not unless I hopped on the back of some bird."

"That's kind of like America. It's so darn big. It ain't easy to see more than just a sliver of it."

"Have you been to the Big Apple Pie?" Ratu asked, his free hand absently fingering the shark's tooth.

"You mean New York City?"

"Of course, Big Jake. What else would I b.l.o.o.d.y be talking about?"

Jake smiled, wiping his brow. "It's got a heap more skysc.r.a.pers than this jungle has trees."

"Skysc.r.a.pers?"

"Buildings so tall that they sc.r.a.pe the sky's belly."

Ratu whistled appreciatively. "I can't imagine such a thing."

"And the people. There are so many, and so many different faces. Kind of like all them fish we speared."

Ratu nodded but didn't immediately respond. He leapt over a rock and slid a few feet on the damp soil. They were almost to the bottom of the hill. "Is it good to have black skin in America?" he asked. "I've heard it's not good."

Jake glanced at Ratu's dark face, wondering how such a question should be answered. "In some ways it's just fine. In others it ain't."

"How's it good?"

"It's good because things get better. My daddy owns his land. And it's beautiful land. And as long as it don't rain too much or too little, we'll keep that land." Jake took a sip from his canteen and then offered some water to Ratu. "And there ain't nothing quite like running my fingers through that soil." He smiled at the memory. "I even tasted it once."

"You ate dirt?"

"I sure did."

"Get stuffed, mate. Why?"

"Everything grows in that dirt. And I wanted just a bit of it inside me. Figured it couldn't hurt none."

Ratu reached the bottom of the hill and grabbed a spear that he'd left leaning against a tree. "And the bad part of having black skin in America?"

"I always hold my head real high, Ratu. It's good to be proud, I reckon. But just because I hold my head high don't mean that people will think much of it. A head can be held high, but if that head belongs to a black man, especially a poor black man, people ain't gonna understand that pride."

"What do they think it is?"

"Depends on the person who's doing the thinking, I reckon. Sometimes arrogance, sometimes anger. Sometimes they look at me like they think that I'm running from something. That they should be afraid."

"The captain doesn't look at you that way."

Jake followed Ratu into the jungle, noticing how he continued to hold the shark tooth. "He did once. When we first met. But he ain't done it since, and he's as fine a man as there is."

"Did they laugh at you when you were a boy?"

"A handful of times, I expect. But I tried mighty hard not to give them reasons to laugh."

"How?"

Jake paused, recalling moments from his childhood. "Oh, I'd go through the trash and pull out newspapers. And I'd sit for a spell and read them, try to at least learn how whites spoke. What words they used and such. My brothers and sisters thought I was crazy, reading all them newspapers. But they taught me a lot."

Thinking of his father, of how he was certainly following the orders of white men, Ratu asked, "Why didn't you just stay on your farm? Why come here?"

Jake stepped over a fallen log. "Because . . . because how can I expect the world to be a better place if I ain't gonna try real hard to make it better? I reckon you can't just throw a bunch of seeds on the ground and expect head-high corn. You gotta water and fertilize and pull them weeds. Then you'll get your head-high corn. And that corn will be the sweetest thing that you ever did taste."

"I've never had corn."

"Why is it that you're always touching that tooth?" Jake asked, reaching down to pluck a fresh blade of gra.s.s from the ground. "You touch that thing as much as a woman does a baby's fingers."

Ratu slowed his pace, realizing that Jake was right. He had been touching his tooth a lot. "I don't know, Big Jake. I tell you, I b.l.o.o.d.y well don't. But I think for good luck. My father had a necklace that he always rubbed before we went fishing."

"Well, maybe you'd better rub it a few more times so that we'll catch dinner tonight."

Ratu absently touched the tooth, his mind still awash in their earlier conversation. "Should I hold my head high?" he asked.

Jake wasn't used to giving advice to anyone, let alone to a boy. And so he thought about what words to share. Finally, he said, "Don't let anyone, even me, tell you how to hold your head, Ratu. That'd be like me telling the sun how to shine. You do what makes you happy. Nothing more, nothing less."

"But what if I don't know?"

"Then don't worry. The sun might not know how it shines, but it sure does look pretty."

THE TREE SWAYED like a dancer beneath her. Gripping two branches, Annie sat on a thick limb and watched the jungle stretch and shake. She'd been up in the tree for at least an hour. After she'd finally stopped crying, she'd been angry with herself for getting so upset. She'd felt as if she had taken a step backward, regressing into the old Annie who was forever scared of the world. And so she'd forced herself to do something she'd always feared-to climb a high tree. The way up hadn't been easy, and she'd sc.r.a.ped her arms and legs in several places. In fact, she'd almost fallen when a branch snapped beneath her. But she'd made it to the top, and her head had started to clear.

The motion of the tree had been disconcerting at first, but Annie was now used to the pattern of movement, and it reminded her of being aboard Benevolence Benevolence. After all, the way the tree leaned back and forth was little different from how Benevolence Benevolence had rolled over swells. had rolled over swells.

Though Annie had originally planned on just climbing up and down the tree, once near its top she hadn't wanted to leave. She wasn't quite ready to face Akira, as well as the questions that had so troubled her after the argument with Isabelle. So even though her stomach rumbled, she remained in the tree, reliving the highlights of the past few days rather than her words with her sister.

The sky was starting to darken when she heard Akira calling her name. Even from a distance she detected urgency in his voice. She responded loudly, and soon he was standing thirty feet below her, looking up with great surprise. "Are you hurt?" he shouted.

"I'm sorry," she said, pleased to see him. "I'm just fine."

"May I climb up?"

"Please."

Akira grabbed a stout branch and pulled himself off the ground. The tree boasted many thick branches and was nearly perfect for climbing. After a few minutes, he reached her spot. He could see the cuts on her arms and legs, and her apparent vulnerability gave him a sudden urge to kiss her brow. He hesitated, but then leaned toward her, and her arms wrapped around him. He pressed his lips against a freckle on her forehead.