The Phoenix Tree. Jon Cleary

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ be sent back to my outfit?’

      Embury shook his head. ‘No, we probably wouldn’t let you go. We may have to keep you in protective custody for the rest of the war. In better conditions than those relocation camps you were sent to, of course.’

      ‘Of course.’ Okada sat up straighter. His athlete’s body felt bruised, but it was really only his mind that was so. But this was still preferable to standing on the cliffs of Saipan, where his mind had almost suffered a knock-out blow. ‘Go on, sir.’

      ‘You’re interested?’

      ‘I’m interested, but that doesn’t mean I’m volunteering for anything. If I’m going to be kept in protective custody for the rest of the war, you’ve got nothing to lose by telling me more. You’ll have to tell me, if you want me to cooperate.’

      Embury looked at Irvine. ‘Do you have guys like this in the British services?’

      ‘Occasionally. We exile them to the colonies or we send them out on commando raids and they become dead heroes.’ Irvine smiled at Okada, like an angler who always landed something from troubled waters.

      ‘I’ve heard of the British sense of humour, sir.’

      ‘It helps us muddle through,’ said Irvine, using a phrase that had become a British battle cry. Then he stopped smiling. ‘I wish you would help us in this little venture, corporal. It could mean a great deal to both our countries, America and Britain.’

      For some reason he couldn’t fathom at the moment, Okada was suddenly receptive. Perhaps it was the friendliness in Irvine’s manner; the Englishman, of course, had no authority to be as demanding as Embury or Reilly. But it was obvious that, for some reason or other, Irvine had a personal interest in the matter. He did not have the bored, indifferent look of a liaison officer.

      Okada looked back at Embury. ‘Tell me more, sir.’

      Embury studied him for a moment through the smoke of his pipe. ‘Okay, corporal. But the more I tell you, the more you’re committed to going along with us … Admiral Tajiri was a leading member of the Strike-South faction in pre-war Japan. There were two factions – the Strike-South, the minority one, which had its eye on Southeast Asia and the Dutch East Indies, and the Strike-North faction, which thought it should prepare for an all-out war against communist Russia. Eventually the Strike-South lot won out. Admiral Tajiri knew the chances were high that America would come into the war if Japan struck south. So he set about preparing a spy ring. Minato was one of the first sent over here.’

      ‘Have you picked up any of the others?’

      ‘Several. They’re all held in Federal prisons. None of them volunteered to be turned around. But Minato now loves our way of life, he’s all for Mom and American apple pie and he thinks American democracy is the greatest system ever invented.’

      ‘Really?’ said Lieutenant-Commander Irvine, RN. Democracy was like original sin, anyone could lay claim to it.

      Embury grinned at him, exposing teeth that looked as if they had been worn down by his pipe. ‘I was quoting our friend next door, David. No offence … The trouble is, corporal, we think Minato’s new-found love of America is just a bit too convenient. But we do believe that if we can smuggle him back to Tokyo, the risk is worthwhile. He may turn out to be very useful.’

      ‘What if he feeds you false information? How will you know the difference?’

      Embury nodded approvingly. ‘You’re sharp, corporal. You’re right in step all the way, aren’t you?’

      ‘Let me say something, commander. I grew up in this country as a virtual outsider, no matter how much I loved Mom and apple pie and the American flag. You might almost say I was like a Jew in Nazi Germany. I had to be sharp to stay in step. You got no idea the number of times I stumbled, especially as a kid, and fell out of line. It was a question of survival – being sharp, I mean.’

      Embury, Irvine and even Reilly looked suddenly sympathetic; as if, up till now, they had looked only in Caucasian mirrors. Reilly also looked disconcerted, as if he had not realized there had been another, earlier war going on.

      ‘It’ll be a question of survival in Japan,’ said Embury. ‘We won’t try to hide that from you. You’ll be our filter. Minato will give the information to you as his control and you’ll assess it before passing it on. We hope to teach you how to assess that information before we send you off. Our main hope is that when we get Minato back into Japan, he’ll go into Naval Intelligence on the staff of Admiral Tajiri. After six years in the field they’re not going to waste his experience.’

      ‘There’s an awful lot of hope going on, sir. What hope do I have that I’ll come out of this alive?’

      ‘Oh, about fifty-fifty – we hope.’

      Okada was surrounded by smiles. He felt suddenly angry; then he made himself relax. Getting angry with these men would get him nowhere; once again he was the outsider. Then his curiosity, if not yet his patriotism, began to get the better of him. There were drawbacks to having been trained as a lawyer; one enjoyed listening to argument.

      ‘After I’ve assessed the information, how do I get it back to you? It seems to me that could be pretty hopeless, too.’

      ‘David?’ Embury looked at Irvine.

      Irvine stood up, as if now that he had been invited to speak he had to stretch himself. He was about height, goodlooking but balding, with dark, and darkly amused, eyes; come Armageddon, he would treat it as the final, inevitable joke and accept it. He had what Okada, from meeting British officers in Burma, had come to know was a public school accent. British public schools, that is; Gardena High had never turned out an accent like Irvine’s. He had the assurance of someone who would never feel an outsider, anywhere at all.

      ‘I was in Tokyo before the war, as a junior naval attaché with the British embassy. We set up certain people as agents – we were working with our Secret Service, MI6. One of the agents was a man named Cairns. He was an authority on Oriental art, a professor at Tokyo University. He was very devoted to the Japanese in general, but not to their militarism, though he never said anything about that. He was highly regarded and he had access to a lot of top people. He was very valuable to us. He stayed on in Japan after war broke out in 1939 and even after Pearl Harbor – and the Japanese never suspected that he was an agent.’

      Okada noticed that Irvine had not once used the word spy: the word was agent. Like most Americans of his time Okada knew little or nothing about spies and how they worked; he could remember seeing a couple of Alfred Hitchcock movies about British spies, but only one featuring an American. That had been Above Suspicion, which he had seen almost a year ago at the Language School: Joan Crawford had been an amateur, just as he would be if he agreed to go ahead with what was being suggested. He began to suspect that Irvine was the real professional in the room, at least in the field of espionage. He might be Royal Navy, but he was not just a sailor.

      ‘Professor Cairns was interned. Not sent to a prison camp, but to a resort village about forty miles south of Tokyo. Friendly aliens, if they had the right connections, were kept in several places like that. Aliens who did not want to be repatriated to their home countries or had no homelands to go to. Professor Cairns stayed on, ostensibly because he thought of Japan as his home – which he did. But he was also intent on continuing to work as an agent. He died in Nayora in May last year. Since then his wife has carried on in his place.’

      ‘How? СКАЧАТЬ