Oonishi sighed, “If there was just something we could do.”
“Don’t worry Bien, I will think of something.”
Oonishi ordered another round—André was drinking his beloved Molson, while Oonishi, in a patriotic flourish, was drinking—or pretending to drink—Canadian Club. Oonishi steered the conversation to André’s favorite topic, and a topic that he genuinely did know welclass="underline" Walschaert versus Stephenson valve gear, or more specifically the wonders of Walschaert.
To make engineer, André had to bribe the examiner with $1,000 of Oonishi’s money as Andre was well under the minimum height requirement. As making engineer was André’s life-long dream—“since I was five”—Oonishi was now André’s very best friend—“ask me to do anything and I will do it for you.”
André expounded on the manifold benefits of Walschaert valve gear,
“You see, Bien, with the Walschaert valve gear, a steam locomotive is more efficient. We engineers (he paused for effect), all want to save as much coal as possible, while still keeping on time. With the old Stephenson gear, it is hit or miss—no control.”
Oonishi waited for the obligatory barb, and did not have to wait long,
“Of course, those fucking southern cunts only adopted Walschaert after we Canadians did.”
Oonishi listened intently, not because of his agent training in working an asset, but because André held more than a spec of gold.
“The valve gear is the brain of a modern steam locomotive—all else is just steel and brass and copper, but the control is all in the valve gear. Disable or damage the valve gear and the locomotive is dead.”
On hearing this last sentence, Oonishi looked up at the door as a rare woman entered. She was a working girl from the docks on the river, well past her prime, and she made her way to a table at the back where four lumberjacks sat.
“Yes, that is fine, but removing a piece of the valve gear is of no use, even your American friends are not that stupid—they could easily replace it.”
André’s face instantly flushed,
“No, no, no. Totally wrong. Totally wrong, Bien.”
“You see, the trick is to add a holed coin to the upper oiler.”
Oonishi played the fool and looked as stupid as he could, “So?”
“So? Fucking so? I tell you what-the-fuck so.”
André assumed a conspiratorial crouch over the bar and moved just a little closer to his benefactor.
“I can make a coin that will allow the loco to get onto the main line, travel for two or three hours. And then…”
Oonishi’s face was that of a timid 15 year old school boy getting a tutorial from the senior master.
“And then,” André smiled, put his fists together and made a motion as if to wring a chicken’s neck.
“But how can you be so sure?”
“Look, I am an engineer (another pause for effect) and in advanced training class we are trained on the flow rate of lubricating oil for all points of the valve gear. As a warning to all of us, one of our instructors started the valve gear on the training chassis in the morning class and he reduced the oil flow to the upper oiler by exactly one-third. Sure as Yankees are pigs, the upper oiler seized right on time at two in the afternoon.”
“So these are special coins, right?”
André looked at Oonishi as if speaking to a simple child, he sighed, “Yeah, really special—take a Canadian quarter, drill a 3/8th inch hole in it, and Bien, you have your special coin.”
“Oh, I am sorry Engineer Maloit, I am just a lay person, you are the engineer,” Oonishi said with as much candor as he could muster. Enunciating André’s formal title was all that was needed to make the little man Oonishi’s marionette.
The engineer simply nodded, “That is fine my friend, you are not an engineer, you could not possibly know this.”
They went back to drinking as the whore left with two of the lumberjacks.
While a completely reasonable assumption on the part of André, in this case the engineer was wrong—two years earlier this precise illustration had been given to Oonishi in the test area of the sprawling locomotive works in Yokohama. And on that day, the instructor had used an American quarter and had even used a 3/8th inch drill—from one of the two drill sets in the locomotive works that was not metric. The results were the same.
Next to his beloved locomotives and drinking on Oonishi’s wallet, André’s other fascination in life was greyhound racing, or more specifically losing money betting on three-legged greyhounds. As fate would have it, André lived within walking distance of one of the two indoor greyhound tracks in Montreal. It was not uncommon for André to seek out his friend on a Monday evening and seek “a little loan,” which Oonishi was more than happy to provide. By Thursday the loan had been forgotten. Oonishi slowly fed André’s habit with a simple expedient:
“André, could I ask you do to me a favor? Could you take this $100 and wager it for me. With you, it is more like an investment than a wager.”
André would always beam at this, and would happily agree. In this way, Oonishi encouraged André to attend every meeting.
By late November, Oonishi friends in the bar warned him that André was “owing some very nasty people a lot of money, so be careful, Bien.”
While working André, Oonishi also recruited five other engineers—one for each of the other mainline roundhouses of the Canadian Pacific railroad. In addition, at the bars servicing the thirsty mechanics of the army motor pool depots, Oonishi had slowly recruited 12 mechanics, and like all men, these men had their own foibles and not a few of these foibles were weaknesses: one mechanic was running a wife and three different mistresses at the same time; one was always drinking at work, and always getting caught and always surviving only because of Oonishi’s “loans” used to bribe his accusers; one loved to steal from the depot—“everyone does it”—and the depot police would visit his house at the most inopportune times (the depot police got anonymous tips by telephone, the caller speaking impeccable French); one loved the high life in Montreal where he particularly liked to employ the services of the high-end whores, generally more than one at a time.
Of course, like the six engineers, the 12 mechanics were each in their own cell—independent and self-standing agents; the loss of one would in no way impinge on any other agent.
Like André and his Walschaert gear, the 12 mechanics all had their own ideas about the best way to disable a truck, from the simple to the fantastic. As was to be shown on the second week in December, one of the most effective approaches was simply to snip the bowden cable of the truck’s choke with a small pair of bolt cutters—wire cutters could be used but in practice it proved to be difficult, whereas a small pair of bolt cutters—it was the proverbial hot knife through butter. In the frigid Canadian winter, trying to start a gasoline engine without a choke would typically flatten the battery and with 48 trucks in a pool, all trying to be mustered at once, well the effect was chaos.
Three of the other mechanics used the tried-and-true sugar in the fuel tank. This worked extremely well, especially after Oonishi had specified the finest icing sugar—poured faster and dissolved faster than regular sugar. A patriotic variant used by two other mechanics was Canadian maple syrup.
Running and protecting and nurturing and controlling all these agents was exhausting—Oonishi was out every night, sometimes visiting two bars in one evening. However, Oonishi’s little black book was full. All he needed was the signal from Tokyo.