San Francisco. Kuzumi was not surprised at the piece of paper Nakanga had carried in from the intelligence section. It had not taken them long to go back and dig up the code words.
It made sense. San Francisco was the most important port on the American west coast. Most of the war supplies and ships that were thrown into the war against Japan flowed out of the Golden Gate in 1945. But there were other very important factors to be considered when looking at that city.
San Francisco from April through June of 1945 had been host to the inaugural meeting of the United Nations. If Japan wanted to strike back at the world that was bearing down on the Empire, there was no more symbolic target than San Francisco. Even by late August there still were representatives from almost every country other than the Axis powers present in San Francisco working under the fledgling auspices of the UN to develop a new world order.
Nira had to have known. That was the first thought that popped into Kuzumi’s head. Was that why she killed herself? When the mission failed, as it obviously did? With her husband declared dead, her child killed in the blast at Hiroshima, and the final mission of the Genzai Bakudan a failure, had she finally given up? Kuzumi thought about it for a few moments and decided it was most likely what had happened. It was what he would have done. He silently mouthed a prayer to the Sun Goddess for his dead lover and his dead son.
And why had Genzai Bakudan failed? Even though he now knew I-24’s final destination, he still didn’t know where I-24’s journey to that final destination had been interrupted Where did the ship and the bomb rest? Kuzumi could still see the second bomb as clearly as if it were yesterday.
Unlike the American bombs, the Genzai Bakudan had been rectangular shaped. Having decided that they could never make one light enough and small enough to be carried by an airplane, the engineers under Kuzumi’s direction had seen no need to develop it with a traditional bomb shape. The rectangle had worked best. It had been over eight feet long by five on each side. They had waterproofed the second one and set it for remote detonation using a radio controller on a specific frequency and amplitude. It had weighed in at over eight thousand pounds when completed.
They had packed enough batteries around the detonator that— Kuzumi stiffened in his chair. They had packed enough batteries that if the submarine was resting on the ocean floor in cold water, there still might be enough juice left for the detonator to fire.
But could it still work after all these years? Would the uranium have decayed past the functional point? Would the metal case have sprung a leak? His scientific training answered each question as it came up. Kuzumi knew the bomb would still be functional unless-He thought about the journey the ship had taken. Most likely the bomb would be sitting in such deep water that the entire casing had been crushed by water pressure. The Pacific was the deepest ocean in the world, and if the journey had been interrupted anywhere between Hungnam and San Francisco it would be lost forever. That is what he had been told had happened to the 1-24.
Yes, Kuzumi decided, the Koreans were fishing and their quarry was buried beyond the current capability of any present technology to recover even if it was found.
But then why did he feel so uneasy?
CHAPTER 11
“So where’s 1-24 now?” Harmon asked. They were in her office, having departed the dark basement after finding what they were looking for and putting everything back in place.
The audacity of the Japanese plan was still sinking into Lake’s mind. “That’s the million-dollar question.”
“It must have gone down between Hungnam and here,” Harmon said. “I guess we’ll never know what happened to it. One of those mysteries of history.”
“What makes you so sure it went down, Doctor?” Lake asked.
“Call me Peggy,” she said. “I think we know each other well enough to dispense with the formality, although you weren’t exactly formal or informal when you came in here with your name.”
Lake nodded. “All right, Peggy. What makes you so sure it went down?”
“Well, no one reported it captured,” Harmon said. “I think we would have heard if a Japanese sub had been captured with a nuclear weapon on board.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” Lake said. “Bigger things than that have been covered up.”
“Like what?”
“Let’s stay with the problem we have,” Lake said. “I think an atomic bomb is big enough for us to deal with right now. I think it is possible that the sub was captured. The last message-was dated what, the tenth of August, right?”
“Right.”
“So when did the war end?”
“VJ Day was celebrated on the fifteenth of August. That’s when Emperor Hirohito made his broadcast saying that the Japanese people must bear the unbearable.”
“Okay.” Lake walked to the world map tacked to the wall on the side of the room. “Do you have a calculator?”
Harmon handed one over.
“The 1-24 departed Hungnam around the third of August according to those messages, heading for Ulithi.” He started punching into the calculator. “They would have to sail south down to the east China Sea. Then they get a message diverting them from Ulithi to San Francisco. Start heading due east at flank speed.
“Let me think. A World War II sub; say ten knots surfaced, about the same on batteries submerged. Distance”-his fingers were flying over the keys—“we’re talking over six thousand miles. Let’s say six thousand, five hundred miles from Hungnam to San Francisco. On the tenth they would have been …” He grabbed a pen and started writing. “Sixty-five hundred miles is about fifty-six hundred nautical miles. Moving at ten knots, you make two hundred and forty nautical miles every twenty-four hours. On the tenth they were sixteen hundred nautical miles out. About here.” He tapped the map. “On a line between Guam and Iwo Jima and on course for Ulithi.
“So they get the third message and change course slightly and head due east. On the fifteenth they are another twelve hundred miles east, near Wake Island. Still twenty eight hundred nautical miles from San Fran. Another eleven or twelve days of sailing ahead. They would have reached here about the first or second of September.”
“The peace was signed on board the Missouri on the second of September,” Harmon noted.
“So I think it’s very likely that the 1-24 surfaced and surrendered to Allied forces somewhere around Wake Island in the middle of August.”
Harmon shook her head. “They would never have surrendered.”
“Okay, then, they committed hara-kiri, or whatever it’s called, and dove to the bottom of the Pacific when they found out the war was over and they’d lost,” Lake said.
“That’s much more likely than surrender, especially considering the cargo they were carrying,” Harmon said.
“Well, at least we know it didn’t make it here,” Lake said.
“How do you know that?”
“There was no big boom in San Francisco Harbor in 1945 last I studied my history.”
“Maybe it didn’t work,” Harmon said. “Maybe it’s at the bottom of the harbor.”
“The one in Hungnam worked. At least that’s the information you showed me,” Lake said. “I would assume this one would have worked. Thus it never made it here.” Lake pointed at the file folder that had contained the original messages to 1-24 that was sitting on her desk. “You say there are no further messages to 1-24 after they were ordered to divert to Forest, which we now know is San Francisco?”
“I didn’t find any.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?”