If the Uzumaki was a doomsday weapon, a single goose could be the beginning of a catastrophe on a historic scale. The world had just survived the most brutal, destructive war in history. Could the worst be yet to come?
No.
The Japanese must have a way to protect themselves. Liam couldn’t believe otherwise. An entire nation doesn’t commit suicide. And if they had a cure, Kitano knew about it. Kitano was hiding something—Liam sensed it. And he had an idea how to find out what it was.
He went below, to the room where Kitano was kept. Kitano had been forgotten in the goose excitement, left with a lone guard outside his door.
The guard stopped him. “No one’s allowed inside.”
“I’ve got authorization,” he lied.
“From who?”
“Willoughby.”
“I wasn’t told.”
“Everyone’s worried about the goose. It must’ve got dropped. You want me to—”
“No. It’s okay.”
LIAM TOOK A SEAT ACROSS FROM KITANO.
“A goose landed on the Vanguard, then took off again. There’s a good chance it’s infected. It was last seen going north.”
No reaction. Kitano was exactly the same, the dead eyes, the even demeanor.
“Japan is to the north. That goose is headed toward Japan.”
No reaction.
God damn it. Why wasn’t he reacting? The goose could easily find its way to Japan, a thousand or so miles to the north. It would devastate Japan. Why wasn’t Kitano upset?
Liam pushed him again about the Uzumaki, listened carefully as the grim-faced man told the same stories about the tests. At Liam’s insistence, Kitano carefully described every experiment he saw or heard about at Harbin. It was grisly, horrifying, and useless. Kitano described nothing that sounded like a trial for a vaccine or a cure. Only death after death.
Kitano stopped. “You realize you are wrong. There is no cure.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He saw something flicker in Kitano’s eyes. “Let me tell you about our tests at Ningbo, on the eastern coast of China, south of Shanghai. We used low-flying airplanes that dropped wheat laced with bubonic plague. With standard bubonic plague, nine in ten who contract the disease die. With the strain released on the people of Ningbo, ninety-nine out of one hundred died.”
“What is your point?”
“Seven of the team from Unit 731 were among the dead. The researchers contracted the disease themselves. They died. Ishii had no cure for bubonic plague. But that did not stop him. It did not stop us. We are not afraid to die, Mr. Connor. You must understand that, if you are to understand us.”
Liam studied Kitano, tried to look into his soul. Kitano was right—the entire nation of Japan worshipped death. Glorified it. Maybe it was true. The Japanese had shown time and time again an utter insensitivity to losses on their own side. Could they have launched these attacks with no cure? The Uzumaki was the ultimate Tokkō mission. The suicide attack of a nation, in order to bring down the entire world.
He stayed after Kitano, asking more questions. “Did any of the Tokkō ever mention a name besides Uzumaki?” No. “Did you ever see them take any medication? Anything?” No. “Aspirin?” No. “A powder?” No. “Anything?” No.
Liam had asked all these questions before. He felt as though they were stuck on a wheel, spinning around and around, twirling questions without getting any closer to the answer.
He stared at Kitano, his thin features, cheek swollen from his removed tooth. Then, apropos of nothing, two separate images came to him. The first was of an autoclave, a machine for sterilizing biological equipment.
The second image was of the medic handing out the penicillin tablets. They were of no use. The Uzumaki wasn’t bacterial. It was fungal.
A glimpse of the hem of the secret.
Liam chased the idea, followed it through. Penicillium. The most famous fungus in the world. In the early part of the war, thousands of soldiers died from bacterial infections. But after the Americans learned to mass-produce penicillin in 1943, Allied soldiers stopped dying. The antibiotic had an enormous impact on the war effort. Hardly an American or British soldier had not taken the drug by the time the war was over.
The Japanese had no penicillin. The Japanese died.
The Japanese had worked on it but had never gotten past the stage of producing the drug by the thimbleful. Probably not more than a handful of Japanese citizens had ever taken the drug.
What if that was the missing piece? The more Liam thought about it, the more sense it made. It was brilliant. Weakness to strength.
Liam met Kitano’s gaze. He stared at him for maybe thirty seconds. Then Liam said, “Penicillin.” He saw an involuntary flash of recognition in Kitano’s face. It was quickly gone, replaced by his dead stare.
A tingling ran up Liam’s spine. “You gave your test subjects penicillin, didn’t you?”
Kitano started to speak, stopped, faltered. Kitano’s hand was shaking. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Liam was on his feet. “You damn sure do, you bloody bastard.”
THE ENGINES WERE RUNNING FULL TILT WHEN LIAM MADE IT to the bridge.
Penicillin. That was the difference. The Allies had penicillin. The Japanese did not. Penicillin was a miracle drug because it killed deadly bacteria that led to infections. But after a regimen of penicillin, the human digestive tract was also wiped nearly clean of beneficial bacteria. Yes, it killed off the problematic bacteria and saved your life. But it also wiped out the natural bacteria in you, including the ones that kept fungal invaders at bay. Leaving a person susceptible to fungal invasion. Yeast infections, oral thrush—all were common fungal infections that could flare up after a regimen of penicillin. Without the right gut bacteria, the human body was defenseless.
Defenseless, Liam now understood, to the Uzumaki.
“Tell everyone to stop taking penicillin now,” Liam yelled as he hit the bridge. “The penicillin makes you vulnerable for God knows how long.” Everyone on the bridge was busy, serious, barely acknowledging him. The USS North Dakota was turning away from the Vanguard. All the other ships were doing the same. “What’s going on?” Liam asked. “Is it the goose?”
“No,” Scilla said. “The goose landed on one of the chase ships. A sailor tossed a tarp over it, then beat it to death.” He handed Liam his binoculars. “Look at the stern.”
Liam took the binoculars, caught sight of the mayhem aboard the Vanguard. A few of the sailors were strung up by their necks. Others were beating them with bars of metal. Another was stabbing at the dangling bodies with a bayonet.
“It’s all broken loose. They are completely crazy,” Scilla said. “The captain of the Vanguard was screaming and ranting just before he cut off communications.” Scilla opened the watertight door to the control room. “Willoughby called in the bomber two hours ago. It’ll be here any moment.”
AT FIRST THE PLANE WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A DOT ON the horizon.
“Are we far enough?” Liam heard a sailor ask nervously.
“We’re at five miles,” another said.
The plane grew larger, coming toward them in a perfectly straight line. Then the rumbling, the throaty burble of the props of the B-29 Superfortress.
Liam watched the B-29 pass directly overhead, impossibly high. A second dot appeared below it, separating, pulling away. It fell in a graceful arc, growing larger by the second, a stone tossed from heaven.
Bethe talked while it dropped. “Inside the bomb, a spherical shell of explosives will detonate. It is an implosion device, the explosives launching an inward shock wave, generating tremendous heat and pressure, compressing the plutonium encased inside, creating critical mass. It’s not so complicated, once you understand. Dear God, a talented undergraduate could design one.”