Pearl Harbour - A novel of December 8th (23 page)

He was every bit the antithesis of what a naval officer should look like.

“I’m Captain Collingwood, Tom Collingwood. Figured you might be hungry,” and he held up a battered lunch box and two opened bottles of Coke.

A bit taken aback, James simply nodded and followed Collingwood out of the building, his guide walking past security as if they didn’t exist and, in turn, they didn’t even take notice of him.

“Nice little spot down by the waterfront,” Collingwood said, pointing the way. They weaved their way across the base, Collingwood barely acknowledging the salutes of enlisted personnel, a couple of lieutenants passing, faces deeply tanned, snapping off salutes and then one loudly saying after they passed so that he and Collingwood could definitely hear the comment, “I’d love to see his ass at sea; do that slob some good.”

Collingwood ignored them. They reached the waterfront, a small parklike area shaded by a few trees and a couple of benches to sit on. The two settled down.

“A couple of ham sandwiches, hope that’s okay, wife always packs the same.”

James nodded his thanks, opened the wax paper and looked a bit suspiciously at the offering. It looked to be a day or two old. Suddenly he had a real longing for the faculty dining room on campus--always a good selection of Western and Asian food to choose from, and dam good conversations to be found. Here he now sat with a disheveled captain who, he suddenly realized due to the direction of the wind, was in serious need of a good shower.

He ate half the sandwich and politely put it down. It definitely was a day or two old. maybe more. Collingwood ate his without comment, looking out across the narrow loch to the battleships anchored along the east shore of Ford Island.

Finishing his sandwich, he finally stirred. “Tell me about your work in London during the last war,” Tom asked, smiling in a friendly manner.

“I’m not really sure if I can discuss that.”

Tom waved his hand dismissively.

“Let’s spare ourselves the walk back to the Admiral’s Office to review what I should know. I’m more than cleared for anything you might have inside you.” He smiled openly. “And no, this is not some sort of trick test to see if you are a blabbermouth or not. Scout’s honor.”

Disarmed by the boyish gesture of Collingwood raising his hand in the Boy Scout pledge, he nodded.

“I was part of a joint team in London. Sort of an experiment actually. We and the Brits never really did work well on those sorts of things in the last war but a few wiser heads made a stab at it. Seems that our undersecretary of the navy,” he paused, “now our president, suggested it to someone in the Admiralty.”

“Churchill?”

“No. From what I understood those two didn’t see eye to eye at the same time then. Churchill was gone from the Admiralty before we came into the war. But anyhow, rather than being out to sea, I was stuck in a basement for the duration.”

“You missed being at sea?”

James was silent for a moment. To give the truth would almost be like a priest saying he did not believe in the Trinity.

“Honestly, most of my time at sea I was sick as hell. The thought of patrolling the North Atlantic in winter?”

Watson chuckled softly.

“Same here, and remember, the great Alfred Thayer Mahan, praised forever be his name,” and he made a half-joking gesture of praying at the mention of the famed naval strategist, “would damn near die sitting in a rowboat on a mill pond. He threatened to retire rather than accept sea duty.”

“And your job in that basement?”

James hesitated but then relented. Hell, the information was over twenty years old. and when he retired from the navy, there had been no cautioning even then about talking. It was just he felt naturally reticent about it.

“Trying to crack the German U-boat codes in 1918.”

“Any luck?”

“I suspect you know as well as I do.”

“Go on.”

“I was assigned as an American liaison to what was called ‘Room Forty.’ The Brits had gotten lucky right from the start. The German navy relied on code books. They got a copy from a spy out of Brussels early on in the war. Later, divers actually made it to a sunken U-boat and recovered the code book. Finally, of all things, the Brits captured another code book in Persia, and just what the hell a naval code book was doing with a German consulate officer in Persia is beyond me.

“But then, in 1918, the sources dried up. They actually built an encrypting machine, primitive, but effective for those days. So that’s how I got into it all.”

“And how is that?” Collingwood asked, eyes fixed on him owl-like.

“Statistical analysis was my field, running calculations, trying to find statistical linkages between messages that might lead to the coding source. If you know the language, know the syntax, structure, even the metaphors and have a good analysis of probabilities of word usage you at least have a start.

“Some thought they might have gone back to old-style code. Very simple actually. Take a copy of Wuthering Heights, for example, same editions in the boat and back at headquarters. Numbered to a page, then numbered to a line and word. You can even jumble it any number of times. Number one actually means number 99 on Tuesday and number 65 on Wednesday, and so on. Simple, but clumsy to use, slow to transfer, prone to mistake, and it’s breakable.”

“How so?” Collingwood asked quietly.

“Statistical analysis of course. Guess that’s where I came in. Have a knowledge of the language, percentage of word usages, get a handle on some of the code words, for example whale means battleship, dolphin means cruiser, et cetera. A previous message says whale, we’ve figured that out and we figure out the latitude and longitude, those usually stand out, and sure enough one of our battleships is there. So whale equals battleship and we have a word broken. Cipher that out from one message and you got a few holes filled in on another. Ideally, you can go on and crack the book they are using. Absurd example, but say someone on our team has pretty well memorized Moby- Dick, or Goethe’s Faust, and someone on the other side’s code room gets lazy and uses four words in a row. One of our whizzes remembers the quote, cracks that, and we have the book. But that’s the stuff of bad spy novels. No one is stupid enough these days to use book codes anymore or for that matter even specially designed code books--too prone to espionage. Fair to assume everyone is using some sort of encoding machine now, though for lower priorities code books still might be done temporarily.

“Oh, Room Forty was an amusing place, Oxford literature dons mixed in with biblical experts, and statistician types like me. It was all very interesting, but it wasn’t book codes. We finally figured out that it actually was an encrypting machine. Got our hands on it after the Armistice. Primitive but believe me, we were impressed. It drove us near to distraction in the final months of the war.”

“You have a thing for languages, don’t you, James.” He smiled and nodded.

“I was hated at Annapolis, you know. I don’t know why, but hear a language once and it sticks. Give me a few months and I can read it. Maybe not speak it like a native but can read it. Whizzed through German and French and could nearly sleep in the class. Was first in my class in both languages and boy did the other guys resent that, especially because I never had to study. I just read it and it stuck. Maybe it hurt me in the long run; had a reputation for being something of a grind, as they used to call my types.”

“Eighth in your class.”

“Men five years behind me are now captains and angling for commodore and rear admiral now with this expansion.” Collingwood nodded sympathetically. “We serve as we are able to serve.”

James said nothing, stomach growling with hunger. He looked at the half-eaten sandwich but decided against it. “I understand your Japanese is rather good. You even speak it with some of your students at the university.”

“How do you know that?” James asked, a bit defensively. Collingwood smiled. “Don’t ask.”

“Well, it’s in the family, my wife and mother-in-law speak it all the time, and even when we were dating I was curious if they were talking about me or not,” and he waited a moment. “My wife is half-Japanese, is that a problem?”

“No, James, no problem at all. That’s been checked.” Though Hawaii was a place where races did so freely mix, the prejudice was still there. In some ways it could be said it was not helped by the local population who had immigrated directly from Japan in recent years. The local Japanese-language newspaper actually referred to the campaigns in China as “another victory,” and to the Japanese army as “our army.” Some families had actually sent their sons back to the homeland to serve. Rumors were rampant about alleged tourists down by the harbor every day, taking photographs, with families conveniently posed to one side of course, if questioned.

“Margaret’s mother came over back in ‘ninety-six as a girl. She has absolutely no contact with any relatives back there, for that matter she doesn’t even know if she has relatives there.”

“It’s okay, James, relax,” Collingwood said. “Just the question was raised and had to be answered.”

“What question? Why? Frankly, I think it’s time I got to ask a few questions.”

“Shoot.”

“What the hell are we talking about? Am I being recruited for cryptanalysis?”

“I can’t say yet.”

“Well, I’d like to know.”

“Hypothetically, let’s say you were. Would you take it?”

“I don’t know. It was migraine work. Bust your ass for weeks staring at hundreds of pages of numbers, trying to trace patterns, you start to crack it, and then the bastards on the other side change the game around and everything is for naught. Sleepless nights ‘cause you can’t get it out of your head. It makes you crazy.”

Collingwood smiled and looked down at the coffee stains on his lap in a bit of a self-deprecating manner. James added, “And, my God, to do it in Japanese? A pictograph language converted to Western alphabet just within the last hundred years? Unique letterings that we don’t have, idioms and complex syntaxes unknown to any Western language, definitions of words absolutely blurred, at times nearly impossible to translate effectively. It makes cracking German look like a breeze, which it is in comparison. Plus, I’m willing to bet they’ve created hundreds of obscure metaphors for everything related to naval affairs. The Japanese love poetic metaphors that we would never dream of using. You’re talking a code-breaker’s nightmare.”

Collingwood just looked at him, hands clasped between his legs, head half lowered, looking at James over the rim of his glasses.

His gaze lifted from James to the battleships, more Liberty Boats coming in, excited young sailors whooping and hollering.

“Some think that’s our first line of defense out here,” Collingwood said softly, nodding to the tethered ships, anchored to their moorings.

He looked back at James.

“But it’s not.”

“That’s what this job is, isn’t it?” James asked.

Collingwood simply smiled.

Battleship
Nagato,
Flagship of Admiral Yamamoto Kure Harbor, Japan: 3 February 1941

Saluting stiffly, Commander Genda stood in the open doorway to Admiral Yamamoto’s private quarters. The room was plain in its appointments; a standard table covered with green cloth dominated the center of the room, surrounded by eight chairs, charts laid out upon the table. The portrait of the Emperor hung upon the inner bulkhead wall, a bookshelf beneath it filled with works both in Japanese and English. Yamamoto looked up from the far end of the table, acknowledged the salute, and motioned for Genda to enter and close the door. The admiral was sitting comfortably, wearing a heavy quilted kimono rather than standard uniform, the steam heat turned down so that the room was cool. It was frigid outside, the wind blowing a mixture of sleet and snow straight down from Siberia, and Genda had felt he would freeze to death during the open launch boat ride across the harbor to where Nagato was anchored. He had neglected to wear an outer coat and gloves, and was now somewhat embarrassed as he removed his cap and slushy water ran off it, splattering the floor.

“Be at ease,” Yamamoto said, with a warm voice, and motioned for Genda to come and sit by his side, and without even inquiring poured a steaming cup of tea, sliding it over to where Genda took his seat.

“Thank you, sir,” Genda replied, gladly taking the ornate fragile cup in both hands, letting the warmth seep in for a moment before taking a sip.

A rattling of sleet echoed against the porthole windows, bolted down tight, and the admiral stood up and went over to one, wiping the moisture off from the inside with the sleeve of his kimono and gazing out for a moment.

“Straight in from Russia,” he said quietly, almost meditatively, Genda nodding, saying nothing, keeping eyes focused on the admiral as he himself sipped down his tea.

The admiral turned and smiled.

“Terrible place to fight a war. Manchukuo is bad enough, but Russia? Our troops who occupied the trans-Siberian railroad during the revolution there suffered the agonies of hell: more died from lung disease than Communist bullets. It is not a good climate for us.”

Genda still said nothing, sensing that the admiral was speaking metaphorically about the current crisis, the debate between “north or south.” The army, in spite of its disastrous setback in Mongolia the previous summer, a campaign that had cost them over fifty thousand casualties against the combined Soviet and Mongol forces, still clamored for a northern expansion to take on the might of the Soviet Union for control of eastern Siberia arid Mongolia.

The logic of it completely eluded Genda. What was there in Siberia worth the risk to Japan? Lumber, some ores to be certain, and a vast trackless waste of thousands of miles that could devour entire armies to no effect. And even the army was finally forced to admit that Soviet armor and artillery were vastly superior. There were nearly a million men already in China and Manchukuo; a Soviet campaign would eventually require a million more. And for what gain other than the army’s self-aggrandizing dreams?