The frogmen (8 page)

Tanaka just slept wherever he stopped, his straw hat over his face.

The crew slept on the hard boards of the fantail deck or in the sunken cockpit, using thin grass pallets they kept rolled up in the daytime.

The food was pure monotony—fish and rice. The Polynesians fished from the stern all day long and always had troll lines out. Occasionally they would catch something and would immediately clean it and throw it into the five-gallon tin can which had once contained gasoline, but was now the cooking pot.

There was fresh water for drinking only, but it rained often enough so that washing was no problem. Shaving with salt water was a painful process, and Reeder refused to do it after his first try.

The bathroom was a foot-wide plank extending out about six feet beyond the sternpost. There was a rope to hold, one end of it secured to the wheel mount, the other to the end of the plank, but even with the rope it was an adventure.

At eight o'clock every night Tanaka went into the cabin and locked the door. As soon as he did, the three Polynesians who were off the wheel watch sat down with their backs against the door and wouldn't let anyone come near it.

Tanaka usually stayed in the cabin for an hour or so and then would come out, eat something, and go to sleep.

This infuriated Reeder, who spent a good deal of his time below searching the cabin, trying to find out what Tanaka did in there. Reeder pried loose half

the ceiling planks, took up all the deck planking, and would have pulled the walls down if Max had let him, but he found nothing. Then Reeder concentrated on the engine room, searching every inch of it, even scooping out the filthy bilge water with his hands.

Amos and John and Max also wondered what Tanaka did in the cabin. His navigation, Amos guessed, because he always shut himself in right after taking his evening star sights.

"He just doesn't want us to know where we're going," John said. "I'd say he was talking to Tokyo every night, only there's no radio."

"I bet he hides the stuff, papers and things, in the copra somewhere," Max said. "Reeder'll never find it-It was wearing them out. The days in the cabin, the heat, the lousy food, the rain on them sleeping at night. But, most of all, the suspicion and fear and doubt.

Amos was just settling down to sleep when he saw John come up out of the cockpit and stand on the sacks, looking around. In a moment he waved, beckoning Amos to come aft.

Amos glanced at his watch. It was two in the morning.

Stepping carefully over the men asleep on the deck, they went to the cabin. John closed the door and turned up one of the kerosene lamps.

"I think I've got some answers," he said in a low voice, "only I don't know the questions."

He went over to the forward wall, which, like the entire cabin structure, was of unpainted wood, the planks stained with diesel oil and sweat and salt. Some dungarees and Tanaka's blue jacket were hanging from rusty nails driven into the wood beside the racks holding the plates.

John took the clothes down and did something to one of the planks. A whole section of the wall swung open.

Amos didn't know much about radios, but the one built in behind that wall looked elaborate and expensive, the front of it covered with dials and switches and knobs.

John said, "Funny Tanaka hasn't mentioned this. That thing's got enough power to shoot a message around the world and pick it up coming back."

"How'd you find it?"

"I'm dumb," John said. "It took me two nights to begin wondering about Tanaka saying that we were going to get a message. And then it hit me. How? A sea gull going to drop something on us? A submarine going to come up alongside? So then I figured it's got to be a radio, and if it's a radio it's got to have an antenna and the antenna's got to stick up and the only thing on this tub that sticks up is that little mast up forward. So, tonight, when he went down and locked the door, I put my ear against the mast."

John smiled. "When I heard that teeny-weeny whine start up inside the mast, I knew there was a big ma-moo in this boat somewhere. Nothing else makes a whine like that."

"So he's been talking to somebody every night."

"I don't think so. I'd have heard a key or a bug; you can't kill that racket."

"Not code. Just talking, whispering."

"People don't talk any more, Amos. Not since the war started. It's all in code. Anyway, with that stubby antenna, voice wouldn't carry fifty miles. I think all he does every night is listen. For that message."

Amos stared at the elaborate radio. "Can you run it?"

"Sure I can run it." John reached out and touched the smooth black cup of the key. "I'm the fastest dit-dah gun in the Navy."

"Then dit-dah something to Pearl and ask them what's all this with this little boat and the Japanese skipper."

"What'd they teach you in ensign school?" John asked. "Now in radiomen's school we learned not to listen to anything that didn't come in in the right code on the right day at the right time. Without that, it's just noise."

"You mean you can't even talk to anybody on that thing?"

"You can talk, but who's listening? Look, anybody can say anything they want to on the air. How you going to know who they really are if they don't use your code?"

Amos felt a little foolish.

"That works both ways," John said. "The enemy doesn't listen, either, unless you're talking in his

code. Among other things that bother me is why a little boat like this needs a big ma-moo like that? Who are we talking to, and what code are we using?" He looked at Amos. "We ought to find out."

"How?"

"He's got a board somewhere in this boat," John said. "It's not in his suitcase; I looked. But it's got to be here somewhere."

"A board? The whole boat's a board."

"Amos, not a plank. A coding board. Without one of those, that radio's just a piece of handsome junk."

"What does it look like?"

"About the size of a book. It has little windows in rows with the code cylinders behind them. You turn them with knobs. But before you can do ant/thing you have to have the right key code for that day and that time. When you have the key code and do it right, people can take what you send and put it through their coding board and it comes out in plain English. Or plain Japanese."

John looked under the table and then under both the benches. "They always keep it in a case with lead weights built into it so it'll sink if you throw it overboard or your ship goes down."

"If you found it, would you know which language it was made to use?"

"I couldn't prove it was Japanese," John said. "They don't use the Morse code, so I wouldn't know. But if we used it to send a message to Pearl and Pearl didn't acknowledge receiving it we'd know we were in deep trouble."

"We're in trouble period," Amos said.

John walked over to the radio. "I can fix this thing so it can't talk to Pearl Harbor or Tokyo or anyplace else."

"Yeah," Amos said vaguely, thinking.

"Only, if he's who he says he is, that would just buy us a lot more trouble. We ought to find the coding board first, Amos. Then at least we'd know who he's listening to."

"It could be anywhere. In any one of those sacks. Under a plank. In the walls."

John slumped down on one of the benches. "What if it turns out that Reeder's been right all the time?"

Amos looked at the radio, then swung the wall shut so that it disappeared. "Very clever," he said, opening the wall again. "John, I think Tanaka's got to explain this to us. Right now. I'm going topside and tell Max and Reeder to stand by until I get him down here. You wait over on the starboard side of the engine, where he can't see you."

"What if he jumps you?" John asked.

"Then we'll know," Amos said.

The voice from the doorway startled them. "What would you like to know?" Tanaka asked. He came on into the room, stopping at the end of the table. He had nothing in his hands.

"You went to a lot of trouble to hide this thing from us," Amos said, motioning at the radio.

"Not from you. This has got to be nothing but a little boat going around picking up copra from the beaches. It doesn't need a radio like that."

"Then why's it got one?"

"Sit down. Both of you," Tanaka said.

"I'm all right," Amos said, standing where he was.

"Suit yourself, Amos."

John didn't sit down either, but Tanaka sat on the edge of the table and pushed his straw hat back. "Now John, I'm no expert on these things. That's why I need you. Isn't it a beauty?"

"Lot of radio," John said. "What for?"

"I'll check you out on it," Tanaka told him. "When we need it, it's got to work."

"I can't check out on it without a coding board."

"You won't need one," Tanaka said. "We're under strict radio silence. All we do is listen."

"How'll I know what I'm hearing?"

"I'll give you the key code."

John looked straight at him. "Then you've got a coding board?"

"Of course."

"Commander," Amos said, his voice unsteady, "if you want us to believe you, all you have to do is show us the coding board. Let John see what language it uses. It would help a lot." 1 know," Tanaka said, "but I won't." 'Why not?"

"Because I don't trust you. Not all of you." 'Since it's somewhere in this boat, we can find it."

"I doubt it."

"We don't even have to see it," John pointed out. "If you'll send a message to Pearl, with me listening, and Pearl acknowledges it, then we'd believe you."

"I won't do that," Tanaka said flatly. "There're enemy planes, submarines, ships, and shore stations taking bearings on every transmission in this area. It's vital that the enemy never suspects there's a radio in this boat."

"Maybe it's just as important for us to know who you are," Amos said. "You ask us to trust you, but you won't even prove who you are by showing John the coding board."

"Without the radio and the coding board, this mission would have to be scrubbed," Tanaka said. "I can't take a chance with you people in the mood you're in now."

"Commander," Amos said, "we're either going to see that coding board or you're not going to be able to use it. We're going to stay in here, around the clock."

"Don't bother, Amos," Tanaka said. "The message I'm waiting for will come in one word—one five-letter group, John. I've memorized the key codes I need to hear that message and the two letter groups for each day."

Amos looked over at John. "Can he do that?"

"He wouldn't even have to," John said. "He could have them scribbled down anywhere and we wouldn't know what we were looking at."

John turned to Tanaka. "But we don't need to see the coding board, Commander. Because, without this radio there'll be no message. And no reason to go on. In thirty seconds I can fix this radio so you'll never talk, or listen, to anybody on it again."

Without saying anything, Tanaka went aft into the engine room and came back with a heavy, rusty hammer. He held it out to John. "Here. Use this, John. Smash the radio."

John took the hammer, weighing it in his hands, and turned slowly to face the radio.

The only sound in the cabin was the steady, soft roar of the diesel and the small noises made by the sea and the boat.

John reached out and laid the hammer on the table.

Tanaka said quietly, "Thank you, John. I knew you wouldn't. You're not that kind of people."

"That doesn't change anything," Amos said.

"You're right, Amos." Tanaka picked up the hammer and took it back to the engine room. He hung it on the pegs and came slowly back into the cabin. "So if you and John elect to take over this boat, remember that none of you can navigate and we are now 750 miles from the nearest friendly shore, which is an island about a mile long. If you try to go back but are off your course by a fraction of a degree, you'll miss that island by hundreds of miles. . . ."

"I heard that these Polynesians can navigate with nothing but stars," Amos said.

"They can. But every navigator has to know where his destination is. My crew had never before seen that island we left and don't know where it is."

"Maybe we could just persuade you to take us back," John said.

"You know you couldn't, John."

Amos couldn't help admiring this man a little.

"So," Tanaka went on, "when your fuel runs out, the currents and winds will drive you westward again. What do you think your chances are of drifting through the entire Japanese Empire until you reach, say, India?"

Amos swung the wall shut, blocking off the radio. He hung the clothes back on the nails and arranged the china in the fiddles. At last he turned back to Tanaka. "You've got everything under control, haven't you?"

"Everything except you, Amos."

"So it's a standoff."

"It's this: you can't survive now without me, and I can't pursue this mission without you. But I can, and will, pursue it without the radio; I just don't want to have to do it that way. So will you do me a favor?"

They didn't answer him.

"Please don't let Reeder destroy the radio. I can trust you two, and Max. But not Reeder."

Amos said in a low voice, "Aye, aye, sir."

It was night again and raining.

Amos leaned back against the copra sacks. His swollen cheek seemed to be going down and the cool water felt good running in the cuts in his skin.

The fight had started when Reeder got a claw hammer and began working on the wall concealing the radio. Amos had asked him to stop, saying that the noise gave him a headache. He realized now how lucky he'd been, for Reeder had just whirled around and thrown the hammer at him. If it had hit him he would have been in bad shape.

And then Reeder was all over him. It was like

fighting a hay baler. Reeder had him up against the wall before Amos even realized he had a problem.

It was a lucky shot, his right hand straight into Reeder's face with enough force to send him stumbling backward all the way across the cabin.

He hit the wall butt first, and that snapped his head back against it and he slid down it, winding up on the floor with a surprised expression.