The Phoenix Tree. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ October he went with the first wave of the invasion force on to the island of Leyte, in the Philippines. A week after the landing, when a deep beachhead had been established, he was called back from a forward unit and told to report to headquarters.

      ‘I got no idea what it’s all about, corporal. All the order says is that you’re being transferred. Permanently.’

      He hadn’t liked the sound of that. ‘Can I protest, sir?’

      ‘Corporal, I understand you’ve been protesting ever since Pearl Harbor. You must be the bitchingest soldier that’s ever served in the US forces and I’d go back as far as the Revolutionary Army.’

      Okada had smiled through his sweat. ‘Just proving I’m an American, sir.’

      Okada had been put on a plane and two days later, via Honolulu, he was put down in California, his home state which he hadn’t seen in two long years.

      ‘Welcome to San Diego,’ said the Navy officer who looked as if he might have been starched inside his uniform. He was a good six inches taller than Okada, who was five feet nine, and he had a long nose that he appeared to use as a range-finder when looking down at men on a lower level of height and rank. ‘I’m Lieutenant-Commander Reilly.’

      Okada saluted, a sloppy effort due more to exhaustion than disrespect. ‘I hope you can tell me why I’m here, sir. The Navy?’ He looked around the base, as spick-and-span as an admiral’s ribbons. This was the clean end of the war, the best end. ‘Is there some son of services merger going on?’

      ‘God forbid,’ said Reilly. ‘Follow me.’

      Okada, lugging his kitbag, followed the Navy officer across to a low building set aside from the main administration offices. He was conscious of being stared at by passing Navy personnel and he could read the question in their faces: who’s the Jap bum, some prisoner they’ve brought back from the SWPA? Serves me right for looking like a bum, he thought. But then he hadn’t expected to be dumped here in this naval base where even the lawns looked as if they were shaved daily.

      Reilly led him into a room that, though spartan, was still far more comfortable than anything he had seen in the past two years. FDR smiled a toothy welcome to him from a photograph on the wall, but Okada ignored it. The President was not to know that he was no longer one of Okada’s heroes.

      ‘Sir, is this the usual accommodation for enlisted personnel in the Navy?’

      ‘No, corporal, it’s not. It’s usually reserved for visiting officers – certain officers, that is. You will not leave it at any time, unless accompanied by a guard.’ Reilly nodded at the mate second class of shore police who stood outside the door, all self-importance, muscle and gaiters. Okada hated police of any sort, service or civilian. ‘You hear that, mate? If he wants to go to the head or the showers, someone goes with him every time. And he is not to communicate with anyone. Anyone, you understand?’

      ‘Jesus!’ said Okada.

      Reilly looked at him. ‘Are you a Christian?’

      ‘Would it help?’ Then he saw that Reilly had little sense of humour. ‘Sorry, sir.’

      Reilly gave him a look that, two years ago, Okada would have considered racist; but he no longer cared about such things. Not today, anyway; he was too exhausted. Reilly went away and Okada, letting his clothes lie where they fell, a most unnaval custom, went to bed and slept for twelve hours. If the war was over for him, he could have cared less.

      Next morning, fed, shaved, showered and dressed in new tan drill, he presented himself, escorted by the SP detail, to Lieutenant-Commander Reilly. With the latter were two other officers, one American, the other British.

      ‘Commander Embury. Lieutenant-Commander Irvine. You may sit down, corporal. For the moment there will be no formality.’ It seemed to hurt Reilly to say it; his starch creaked as he tried to relax. ‘Commander Embury will now take over.’

      Embury was USN, but a reserve officer; the starch in him had never taken, or had been watered down. He had had a successful Oldsmobile dealership in Falmouth on Cape Cod; perhaps the Navy powers-that-be had decided that an auto salesman’s shrewdness would be an asset in Intelligence. Not that he had a slick salesman’s look, as if he’d only sold solid farm machinery. He was untidy, squat and ungainly, suggesting that he was shambling even when sitting down. He smoked a pipe that looked as if it might have been taken from one of the Indians who had greeted the Pilgrims and the tobacco he used smelled as if it were dried peat from the cranberry bogs on Cape Cod. Everything about him said he was a misfit, till one looked at his eyes. Okada had never seen such a coldly intelligent gaze.

      Embury wasted no time: ‘You speak Japanese fluently?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Read and write it?’

      ‘Yes, sir. My father insisted that my sisters and I learn it. And I lived in Japan for two years with my grandparents.’

      ‘We know that, corporal.’

      ‘I thought you might, sir.’ Okada was suddenly wary. ‘Why am I here, sir?’

      ‘You’ve worked with Detachment 101, of the OSS?’

      ‘Just the once, sir, my first action. They were short of an interpreter and I was sent to Burma. I didn’t volunteer, sir.’

      Embury’s gaze suddenly softened as he smiled. ‘You didn’t like it?’

      ‘We were behind the enemy’s lines for the whole of that month, just me and two other guys.’

      ‘I thought Merrill’s Marauders often worked behind Jap lines? Sorry, Japanese lines.’

      Okada ignored the slip, wondering if it was deliberate. ‘They did, sir. But usually in platoon strength, at least. It was pretty goddam lonely, just with those two OSS guys.’

      ‘You may yet feel even more lonely.’ But Embury didn’t elaborate. Instead, he relit his pipe and went on: ‘You have been under observation for quite some time, corporal. Not by us, but by Army Intelligence and before them the FBI. It was not your own record that caused suspicion, but your father’s. As an anti-American Issei, he hasn’t been trusted.’

      Okada well knew that many of the Japan-born, the Issei, were strongly pro-American; but his father had never been, not even in the comfortable days before Pearl Harbor. He could not, however, leave his father undefended; to that extent, at least, he himself was Japanese. ‘I don’t think he’d go in for sabotage or anything like that, if that’s what you mean.’

      ‘Well, he is still under surveillance. Knowing the respect you Japanese, even the Nisei, the American-born ones, have for your elders—’ Embury stopped for a moment to relight his pipe. The father of three bandit brats, he sighed inwardly for what the Orientals had achieved in family life. Then he went on: ‘We couldn’t be sure what influence he might have had on you. But your record with the Military Language School in Minnesota and then in the field with the Marauders and again with the Marines in the Pacific theatre – well, it showed you were prepared to prove you were at least one hundred per cent American.’

      ‘At least that, sir.’ Okada did not feel at ease, but he was not going to be humbly submissive to the Navy, USN or otherwise. He glanced at Lieutenant-Commander Irvine, RN, who surprised him by giving СКАЧАТЬ