Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 10 (29 page)

“That’s Tinian,” Johnson said. He wore a navy blue, anchored skipper’s cap, white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, loose brown trousers and white deck shoes. He pointed toward Saipan. “That anthill in the center of things is Mount Tapotchau, fifteen hundred feet of her.” Then he traced the horizon with his hand. “The coastline here on the western side is almost completely fringed by reefs, except for the mouth of the bay. Few years ago the Japs dredged a deep-water channel to the shore, to improve the anchorage. You’ll see some good-size ships in that harbor.”

Hayden was on the other side of me, but his eyes searched not the horizon but the sky, which was as gray as cement. “I’ve seen prettier days,” he commented.

Tiny brown shapes were moving away from the island. Boats?

“Sampans,” Johnson said. “Okinawan fishermen. They’ll travel for days, looking for flocks of terns, meaning schools of sardine and herring are nearby. And that means bonito and tuna.”

“That’s a relief. I thought it was the Jap armada.”

“Not yet,” Johnson said with the faintest smile. “Not yet.”

Soon we had set off in the dinghy, Captain Johnson minding the motor, with Hayden on the middle seat and me up at the bow. My nine-millimeter Browning was in the travel bag, under several more changes of clerical wear; other than underwear and socks, my real clothing had been left behind. In my right hand were clutched two envelopes, and in my left a passport.

From where I sat as we putt-putted across choppy water, warm wind whipping our hair, I was watching the
Yankee
recede, and I felt a pang of regret out of proportion to my brief stay on Captain and Mrs. Johnson’s ship. It seemed to me I was leaving America, perhaps Western civilization itself, behind; and the faintly decadent sweetness of rich boys paying big bucks to play Popeye, and a rich girl who wanted a shipboard romance with a mysterious government agent (strictly above the waist, you understand), lent a bittersweet flavor to this lonely ride under a broodingly gray sky on rough gunmetal waters. Then the
Yankee
disappeared and I looked over my shoulder.

The shape of the island was no longer vague. A long undulating beast, with the central hump of Mount Tapotchau, crouched on the ocean’s surface, a study in brilliant greens and dull browns, myriad jungle shades. But we were not approaching a primitive world: the tiny boxes of buildings indicated a city, and toy boats that were massive freighters hugged a concrete pier. We were skirting a coral reef now, heading toward a much smaller island, just a glorified sandbar.

“Maniagawa Island,” Johnson said, with a nod. “That marks the entry to the harbor.”

As we drew closer, Saipan was dashing my expectations: the island seemed larger than I’d imagined, as did the surprisingly thriving town of Garapan that spread out upon the flatland beneath the hills. The little city had banished the tropics from its confines; but on either side, coconut palms swayed as per South Sea Island routine, and flame trees, with their dazzling scarlet flowers, dotted the coastline, exotic flourishes of flora.

Garapan, however, might have been a port city in the northeastern U.S.A., with its rectangular concrete wharf embracing freighters and fishing boats alike, the factory sprawl and towering black chimney of a sugar refinery, and row upon row of boxy houses in grid formation. As we neared the formidable jetty, other details filled in: a train pulling in along the pier, warehouses, telephone poles, streetlights. So much for leaving Western civilization behind.

The dinghy chugged into the harbor unnoticed; we pulled alongside the concrete pier, cut the motor, but did not tie up. Over at left, near a smaller, separate jetty, two flying boats floated near the refueling tanks and repair shed and ramps of a modest seaplane base. Down from us, at right, native workers in loose scruffy pants and usually no shirt and no shoes (like the rich boys on the
Yankee
) were unloading heavy sacks—sugar, Johnson said—from a freight car of the quaint-looking little steam-engine choo-choo that rested on narrow-gauge tracks; other workers were hauling sacks up a gangplank into a freighter. Supervising were pith-helmeted Japanese in white linen jackets over buttoned-to-the-neck, high-collar shirts with white trousers and white shoes; it was not quite a uniform….

Someone in a real uniform had noticed us, however.

Muscular, spade-bearded, perhaps twenty-five, he wore a light-green denim shirt, open at the neck, with matching shorts and cap, and this uniform would not have been impressive at all, might even have seemed silly or childish, had that revolver in a black holster not been on his hip.

“Naval officer,” Johnson whispered.

Our one-man welcoming committee pointed a finger at us: Uncle Samurai Wants You. Well, at least it wasn’t his gun. He seemed unhappy. He told us so, in a spew of Japanese.

Johnson responded in Japanese; it sounded clumsy and halting, but our host considered the skipper’s words carefully, then called out and another denim-dressed officer trotted over, a chubby individual who received some instructions, and trotted off again.

Then our spade-bearded welcoming committee unsnapped his holster, and withdrew and pointed his long-barreled .38 revolver at us. The tarp between Hayden and me covered a similar gun. But there was no need to go for it; our host was just keeping us covered.

Behind him and his gun, beyond the warehouses and the train tracks, sat a typical jumbled waterfront—bars, cheap restaurants, small stores, wooden-frame buildings mostly, a few brick. Very few automobiles were in sight; people walked, or rode bicycles.

“How much of their lingo do you know?” I asked Johnson in a near whisper, as we bobbed in our boat.

“That one sentence,” he said. “It was a request that he bring an English-speaking official to meet an important visitor.”

Our host barked at us in Japanese; my psychic translation was: “Shut up!” I heeded my instinct.

We weren’t kept waiting long. When the chubby officer returned, I thought at first he’d summoned one of the men supervising the unloading of the train. Positioning himself before us, feet planted, hands clasped behind him, was a small, somber, rather skeletal-looking gray-mustached fellow in that white pith helmet, linen jacket and trousers getup.

But on closer look, there were differences: the linen jacket had epaulettes, the pith helmet bore a gold badge, and a revolver in a cavalry-style holster rode his belt—arranged for a fancy right to left cross-draw.

“Mikio Suzuki,” he said in a calm, medium-pitched voice. “Chief of Saipan Police. This is closed port.”

“Captain Irving Johnson of the civilian ship,
Yankee,
” the skipper said. “I apologize for this unscheduled stop. We are anchored beyond your three-mile zone. I do not ask to come ashore. I’m here to drop off a passenger.”

He appraised me and my black apparel and white collar with placid skepticism. “Chamorro missions need no new missionaries. Two priests already.”

Johnson said, “Please do us the courtesy of looking at Father O’Leary’s papers.”

I blessed him with a smile as I handed my passport and the two envelopes up. He examined the passport, then withdrew and unfolded each letter; he read them with no visible reaction.

Johnson and I traded tiny shrugs; Hayden had his eyes locked onto these men with guns looming on the pier, his hand draped casually between his legs, hovering over the tarp.

Then Chief Suzuki spoke to the spade-bearded officer, a guttural command that might have been my death sentence.

But within seconds, I’d been hoisted up and out of the dinghy, Hayden handing me my travel bag and a tight smile, while the Chief of Saipan Police carefully refolded my letters, inserted them in their envelopes and returned them to me, with a bow.

“Welcome to Garapan, Father O’Leary,” Chief Suzuki said.

I half-bowed to the chief, then nodded to the skipper and his first mate, who were already putt-putting away from the pier.

Father O’Leary was on his own in Saipan.

The main street of Garapan bisected the waterfront, whose typical seediness was quickly replaced by a wholesomely bustling downtown thoroughfare that, with minor changes, might have been small-town America. One-and two-story structures, sometimes wood-frame, sometimes brick, occasionally concrete, were shoulder to shoulder along the telephone-pole-flung asphalt street—office buildings, restaurants, a bakery, hairdressing salon, hardware store, fish market, the larger storefronts with awnings, smaller shops with modest wooden overhangs, even a picture show (although a samurai movie was playing). The apparel, too, seemed oddly Western—white shirts, white shorts, black shorts—though there was the occasional parasol-bearing housewife in a white cotton kimono, out grocery shopping.

A major difference—besides signs and hanging flags that bore the graceful hen scratchings of Japanese script—was how bicycles outnumbered automobiles. Another was a pervading, unpleasantly pungent odor of copra and dried fish, a near stench at odds with the neatness and cleanliness of Main Street Garapan, as were the occasional Chamorro men, dusky natives of the island, loitering at alleyways and along the wooden sidewalks, dirty and disheveled in their tattered clothes and unshod feet. It was as if the Japanese were a hurricane or tidal wave that had displaced them, and they hadn’t gotten around to tidying up yet.

The sky remained gray but little breeze accompanied this persistent threat of rain. The temperature was mild—probably seventy-five degrees—but mugginess undermined it: I was sticky in my black jacket and clerical garb, lightweight though it was.

As I walked along, travel bag in hand, at the side of the white-uniformed chief of police—who was about as talkative as the stone dogs outside the Oriental Gardens restaurant on West Randolph Street—I was getting discreet but amazed glances from almost everybody.

“They don’t see many foreigners around here,” I said.

“No.” He kept his eyes straight ahead as we marched along, didn’t even look at me when we spoke.

“But you said you have priests.”

“Two. For Chamorro, the missions. Spanish priests. Darker skin than you.”

The morning was still young, and clusters of giggling children, knapsacks on their backs, were heading for school, and an occasional straggling fisherman trudged toward the pier. Handcart peddlers wound their way among the bicycles and pedestrians, hawking in their language, making it sound as if torture were being performed on them, while postmen and policemen on their rounds pinged the bells on their bicycles to clear a path.

Of course, nobody dinged a bell at the chief of police, who was diminutive of stature but towering in bearing; in fact, everybody was clearing a path for us, as we left a trail of intimidation and astonishment in our wake, the chief and the foreigner.

“You have a nice town here,” I said.

“We have factory, hospital, post office, newspaper, radio station, electric light.”

“It’s a modern place, all right.”

On the other hand, they didn’t seem to have indoor plumbing. The side streets were unpaved and dusty, and lined with an assembly of bedraggled stores and ramshackle private homes with tin roofs; outhouses were easily glimpsed, even if they did lack our traditional half-moon.

We were four blocks from the waterfront when the street opened onto the town square, built around a rather grand, official-looking white wooden two-story building, colonial-style with pillars and double doors. The place was like an ice cream salesmen convention: everybody going in and out wore white suits or white shorts and white shoes with white Panama hats or white pith helmets or white military caps.

“Court of Justice,” Chief Suzuki said, quietly proud. “My office here.”

But we didn’t go in; the chief had paused at a black sedan parked out front. He barked at a cop in white shorts, caught on his way into the courthouse; the cop bowed, on the run, went inside and shortly thereafter another servile young copper in white shorts, white cap, and black gunbelt came trotting out and saluted the chief. The chief gave him some instructions, the young copper said, “
Hai,
” and opened the rear sedan door for me.

I took my cue, and the chief got in after me, with the young copper going around the front to play chauffeur.

“Would it be impolite of me to ask where we’re going?” I inquired, as we pulled out between bicycles. The backseat was roomy; it wasn’t a limo, but this Jap buggy with its cushiony black interior was comfortable, even though it rode like a lumber wagon—they’d have to go some to catch up with American automaking.

“Forgive my rudeness,” Chief Suzuki said. “I escort you to meet
shichokan.
”

“Oh. Local official of some kind?”

“Yes. What you call ‘governor.’” He pondered that for a moment. “Not governor of
Nan’yo chokan
; he is not
chokunin.
He is governor of
shicho.
”

“You mean, he’s the governor of Saipan?”

“Not Saipan only. Governor of all Mariana Islands.”

“Oh…but not of Micronesia.”

“Yes.” He seemed pleased that his intelligence and communications skills were overcoming the limitations of the slow-witted child in his care. “I instructed Lieutenant Tomura to call ahead. The
shichokan
…” He chose his words carefully. “…anticipation our arrival.”

Then he leaned back, happy with himself over that memorable sentence.

“Does the, uh…
shichokan
speak English?”

“Yes. Not as well as mine. But he does speak.”

We passed a pleasant park with a bandshell, yet another confounding familiarity in this foreign place; somehow it was oddly reassuring when we glided by a pagodalike shrine on a tastefully landscaped plot.

“Buddhist?” I asked.

The faintest frown passed over the chief’s stone visage. “Shinto.”

“I see. You mind if I roll the window down?”

“Please,” he said.

It was warm in the car, and the only breeze available was the one stirred up by our movement. The chief rolled his window down, just a little, a nice politeness on his part.

“Do you mind my asking what the population of Garapan is?”

The chief said, “Fifteen thousand people. Few thousand islanders.”

Glad he broke it down for me.

I had expected a native village with a small garrison of Japanese troops treating the place like a prison camp; instead, I was in a boom town, attested to by the contemporary residential neighborhood we were rolling through, bungalow after bungalow rising three or four feet off the ground on stone or concrete pillars with neat little yards and gardens of papaya, guavas, mangoes; despite modern construction and style, the little houses wore tin roofs whose grooves sluiced rain to gutters down to cisterns. Occasionally a stone building dating to the period of Saipan’s German domination would rear its head, or a hacienda-style abode going back to the Spanish days. Primarily, however, I was witnessing the boxlike houses—some wood-frame, mostly of newer, cement construction—in the classic gridlike layout of the modern factory town.

But what were they making in this factory town? Were these thousands of people (and natives) all employed by the sugar refinery, and the service industries of the downtown?

On the fringes of the city, finally, were clusters of the poor indigenous housing I’d expected, the thatched wooden shacks before which sat heavy-set middle-aged native women in faded sarongs fanning themselves with palm leaves. I felt strangely reassured.

“Where are the native children?” I asked. I’d seen very few, except a handful of filthy bare-assed toddlers.

“In school. We bring these simple people
kansei.
” The chief winced in thought, briefly, realizing I wouldn’t understand the meaning of that final word. “Rules,” he explained. “Law from society.”

“Civilization?”

He nodded, as if to say,
Not quite, but close enough.

As we left the city, moving along the wide, well-paved road that seemed to be leading us into the green hills, bright red hibiscus grew along roadside hedges beyond which stood guardlike rows of palms, their broad leaves whispering with a hint of wind. Then our sedan turned down, and up, a gently sloping gravel road boarded by blooming flame trees, a riot of red and orange under the dull gray sky.

We ended up in a crushed-stone cul-de-sac, where a number of other black sedans were parked, their radio antennas bearing tiny white flags with red suns. We came to a stop, and the young copper came around and opened the door for his chief. I was reaching for the travel bag at my feet when Chief Suzuki said, “You will not be needing.”

So I left the bag behind—and the nine-millimeter tucked away inside, rolled up in my spare priest attire. The young cop chauffeur stayed behind, too, as I followed Chief Suzuki up a wide crushed-stone path through an immaculately landscaped Oriental garden, with perfectly squared-off hedges and flawlessly rounded bushes, to stone pillars bordering stone steps that rose in landings up a terrace at whose crest sprawled a latticework-decorated white wooden structure, red-roofed, cupola-surmounted, swimming in a sea of red, yellow, white, and purple chrysanthemums, emerald explosions of palm trees standing watch.

This would seem to be the governor’s mansion.

At a slant-roofed portico awaited a Naval officer in a green denim uniform—long pants, jodhpurs, a black-holstered revolver, and something else: a samurai sword. I decided I liked the more casual uniform better.

We were immediately ushered inside, into a world of sliding wooden-frame rice paper walls, hardwood floors, and Buddha-belly vases of dried flowers. We removed our shoes, trading them for slippers, and were escorted into a large sunken octagonal chamber that might have been the living room, but was more a receiving-area-cum-office. The furnishings were sparse but of an impressive dark-lacquered teakwood: three chairs arranged before a massive desk, behind which a higher-backed chair awaited an important posterior.

The possessor of that posterior was a short, heavy-set individual of perhaps fifty, wearing the same white uniform as the chief of police, but with a black string tie, and without a gunbelt, or samurai sword either. His face was pleasant and round, fat enough that his features were getting lost in it, distinguished by a mustache and goatee, his thinning black hair combed forward and plastered to his forehead like a spreading spider.

Chief Suzuki, with a half-bow, said, “
Shichokan,
this Father Brian O’Leary from Milwaukee, United States of America.”

“Father O’Leary,” the
shichokan
said, in a surprisingly bassy, rumbly voice, bowing. “You honor my house.”

I returned his bow. “You do me honor, sir. May I present my letters of introduction?”

The
shichokan
nodded.

I withdrew from my inside jacket the two envelopes and handed them to him.

“Please sit,” he said to me, and with a nod extended the invitation to Chief Suzuki.

We took chairs opposite the desk as he got back behind it, settling into his teakwood throne, where he put on roundlensed wire-frame glasses and read the letters. One, on embassy stationery, was from the German Ambassador to the U.S.A.; the other was from Sean Russell, Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army, currently in the States on a fundraising tour, and laying low after several major London and Liverpool bombings.

They were not forgeries. Wall Street boy Forrestal’s connections with wealthy supporters of the I.R.A. had made both letters possible; and the real Father Brian O’Leary of Milwaukee, a former I.R.A. advocate appalled by the recent spate of bombings, had lent his cooperation. It was a solid cover story.

Seeming mildly confused, the
shichokan
removed his glasses and rested them on the table, by the two letters, which he had not returned to their envelopes. “You are Irish? Or American?”

“I’m an American citizen,” I explained. “My parents were from Dublin. There are many of us in the United States who aid and support the I.R.A. in their righteous war on England. The reason I have come is to seek your—”

The
shichokan
raised a pudgy hand in a “stop” gesture, smiling; his head looked like a cookie jar with a face on it. A face with Fu Manchu whiskers, that is.

“Before we go on,” he said, in that bass that rumbled up out of his squat body like an echo up a canyon, “I will need to show your letters to
kaigun bukan.
I hope you will forgive this formality.”

I loved the way he made it sound like I had some kind of choice in all of this. And, of course, I had no idea what the hell a
kaigun bukan
was.

“Not at all,” I said.

He folded the pudgy hands as if in Christian prayer. “I have taken liberty of calling him. He should be arriving soon…. Tea?”

A lovely young woman in a flower-print kimono served us, and we sipped from delicate hand-painted porcelain cups as the
shichokan
asked me how I liked his island and I told him how swell I thought it was. Chief Suzuki said nothing, barely sipping his tea. Then the
shichokan
inquired if I would like to visit the Spanish mission while I was on Saipan, to meet with my fellow priests, and I declined.

“I came to your island on matters of state,” I said, “not of church.”

“In Shinto religion,” the
shichokan
said good-naturedly, “there is no division…. Ah! Captain Tatehiko.”

The governor rose and so did we, turning to see a slim, surprisingly tall naval officer, in the more formal jodhpurs and sword uniform, embellished with campaign ribbons, striding across the hardwood floor; that he, too, wore slippers made him seem somewhat absurd though no less formidable. I placed him in his mid-forties, a warrior with Apache cheekbones and cuts in his face where his eyes should have been. He half-bowed to us. We all returned the compliment.