“RM1 Puckins, GMG2 Wickersham, I think you two had better disengage,” I said, praying my voice wouldn’t crack with emotion, “and get back to the compound before you get into some real trouble, sporting those unauthorized weapons. I appreciate what you want to do, but I called the shots, I’ll take the fall. Thanks, fellas. Now disengage, and that’s final.”
I felt sorry for the commander. He had drawn a dirty job and only a larger sense of duty made him accept it. He wasn’t a ticket puncher; they have a talent for avoiding the unpleasant and inglorious. They’d never draw a dirty job like this one. They never do.
CHAPTER 8
People jammed Keiko’s bar. Laughter jarred my senses from two or three parts of the room, bringing me back to the present. Waitresses bustled quickly between the kitchen and their tables.
I was determined that sleazy excuse for an officer would not rile me into a slip. “Ackert, here’s a little advice. Watch your drinking, you’re starting to annoy people. Drink your drink, then get out. You fellows on the way up have to be careful about things like that. That—and you ought to be careful where you’re seen drinking and with whom. Why, I’ll bet you’ve already done your future irreparable harm. Here, let me see you to the door before any damage is done, and you might get out with your reputation intact.”
Wearily, I plodded up the stairs. If this mission were compromised, I and everyone who put his faith in me—who went with me—would spend the remainder of our lives chopping frozen wood or digging icy ore in Ivan’s desolate cold storage. That is, if we survived to be taken prisoner.
Rage and frustration broke in alternating waves over me. The Ackerts of the world drew spiteful pleasure from a ruthless and unilateral game of king-of-the-mountain with unsuspecting strangers. Any stranger could be a competing ticket puncher no matter what his professed goals, and never give a sucker an even break. The Ackerts were the new gamesman breed of officer. The gamesman, the military manager, the organization man, the careerist, call him what you may; he was a rapid mover in the brass-heavy bureaucracy and a free trader on the moral marketplace.
A woodcut print dropped to eye level; I had reached the top landing. I slipped off my shoes.
Keiko sensed my anguish. She tugged at my hand and led me into the bedroom. Then, quietly and tenderly, we made bittersweet love.
Non-gamesmen could play at Ackert’s game. I would start a variant of the game with my own rules, call it… king-of-the-abyss.
PART II
CHAPTER 9
Two weeks later, a wintry December rainstorm blew Kiyoshi Sato through the doorway and created a lake the size of Siberia’s Baikal on the inner landing.
“It’s the Dzhugdzhur Range on the western shore of the Sea of Okhotsk,” he said breathlessly. “Haven’t got the coordinates or the camp description yet. They’re going to be hard to come by, most of the prisoners aren’t sure themselves where they are. Other than Siberia, that is.” He shivered. “We’re losing precious time. At best, Vyshinsky can’t last past April.”
I motioned him upstairs and sent for some green tea.
His news foretold worse than I had guessed. The Sea of Okhotsk. Grim, gray waves sprinkled with massive chunks of ice. Moreover, its waters would test every dimension of our Korean-supplied submarine skipper’s skill. He must deposit and later snatch our commandos from between the cocked jaws of a bear trap. Two major Soviet naval centers lay ready on either side of its entrance, Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk. As if to improve the probability of disaster, strung across the throat of the Okhotsk like a noose of pearls, sparkled the tiny Kuril Islands, Ivan’s electronic eavesdropping posts on the Pacific. As much of the credit for the success or failure of the rescue would rest in the submarine skipper’s hands as mine.
Sato, looking less soggy and regaining his usual dignity, estimated the information was over two weeks old. A reliable source, an old prison comrade of Kurganov’s, had obtained it, and the series of human relays that had brought it had a long history of trustworthiness. It composed part of the zek pipeline. Zek in labor-camp slang meant inmate.
“I still need a precise location for the camp, and the composition of its garrison. Do you think the zek pipeline can come up with that sort of information?”
Sato shrugged. “Who knows? Might as well ask for the camp’s spring menu, in case you like Siberia and decide to stay.”
Charts and nautical publications dealing with the western rim of the Okhotsk proved sketchy or out of date. I needed a reference library.
Swearing Keiko to secrecy and yet betraying very little of my plan, I asked her to find me someone who knew the Sea of Okhotsk. This was not as tall an order as it appeared, since her family had many contacts in the Japanese fishing community.
Several days later she gave me a name and address, that of Hiizu Matsuma, on the northernmost island of Hokkaido.
“He is skillful old fisherman, ne? His mother was Ainu,” she added. “He does not like Americans very much; they hurt the whaling industry and his sons work on a whale factory ship. Roshiajins,” she said, using the Japanese word, “he hates. It is almost a sickness with him. An understandable sickness.”
She went on to relate that prior to World War II, Hiizu Matsuma had been a fisherman living on one of the center Kuril Islands. At that time the Kurils belonged to Japan. Occasionally storms swept him onto the Soviet coast—sometimes at Kamchatka, other times north of Vladivostok. The local Evenki, Siberian relatives of the North American Eskimo, gave him food and shelter until he could make the necessary repairs and return to sea. Of course, the official Soviet thinking would have frowned on that, but the Evenki at that time lived a life unaffected by political upheaval in general and the dictates of the Kremlin in particular. Siberia remained as untouched by European civilization as it had under the tsars, until after World War II. There were only some minor infections. Corrective Labor Camps, marred its chilly purity.
When World War II finally reached its fiery bloom, he took a contract to provide fish for a local Japanese army garrison. At thirteen he was too young to serve, and as the war progressed, too important to the garrison’s commandant’s palate to allow to enlist. Often, as Matsuma went out to fish, he saw Russian cargo ships bringing supplies to trade on the Japanese main islands. Despite Russia’s war with Germany it did not declare war with Japan. In fact, Russia carried on an extremely active trade with Japan, high-handedly ignoring the fact that Japan was inflicting heavy losses on Russia’s Atlantic allies, Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States, in the Pacific. Russia finally mustered the nerve to make war on Japan a few days after the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. Russia courageously seized the Kuril Islands and threw virtually everyone with any military connection into a Corrective Labor Camp.
Matsuma was imprisoned with the famed Colonel Kondo, one of the few guests of the Soviet penal system to give nearly as good as he got. Though Russia had never exchanged more than a teapot full of lead with Japan in the war, it seemed to have harbored some bitter personal grudge against the individual Japanese soldier. It did its worst—it treated them as it did its own citizens and gave them infinite sentences for no reason at all. Few were ever repatriated.
Matsuma bided his time and gradually learned Russian. Few Europeans successfully escaped the camps. But Europeans’ physical characteristics contrasted sharply with those of the majority of the thinly scattered local peoples.