Weapons of choice

Perhaps, thought Steckel as he picked his way through the ancient wooden city, Himmler could be persuaded to protect him, if it appeared to be in his interests to do so. The SS-Obersturmfuhrer decided that, when he returned to the Sutanto, he would devote his energies to researching the future of the Reichsfuhrer himself. Things would not have gone well for him if the Allies had won, and the Soviets overran the country. Surely he would want to know how to avoid such a fate.

The Soviets. His stomach turned at the thought. Steckel was well informed of SS policy on the Eastern Front. To have Bolshevik savagery visited upon the soil of the Fatherland itself-it did not bear pursuing.

Steckel was so absorbed in thought that he tripped on a cobblestone and lost his footing on the wet ground. Twisting as he fell, he jarred his arm quite badly, sending a burst of pins and needles shooting up from his elbow. He cursed as he felt the filthy groundwater leaching into his pants. It was dark, with only wooden lanterns to light the way, and he realized, as he looked up from his ignominious perch next to a mound of rotting garbage, that he had wandered off his path.

He was lost.

Steckel had only a superficial familiarity with this part of the old city. He knew how to navigate to the bar and bathhouse, and that was it. He would have to ask directions. That realization led quickly to another. There was nobody about. The alleyway, framed by facades of ancient stone and wooden cottages, curved into blackness some twenty meters on. Steckel turned on his heel, but it was the same behind him, too. He stood in a small, isolated pool of flickering lantern light.

For some reason gooseflesh crawled over his arms and legs, and he shuddered as the hair on his scalp stood up on end. It was ridiculous. What was there to be…

Two shadows detached themselves from the inky void of a small side passage just behind the German spy and flowed like jet-black quicksilver just around the edge of his peripheral vision. A stifled cry caught in his throat and his heart lurched in response to a warning from the deepest, most reptilian part of his hindbrain. His hands fumbled at the buttons of his leather coat, frantically seeking access to the Luger he carried in a deep breast pocket.

The faint swish of a descending Bokken was the last sound he heard before his arm shattered with a blast of blinding white-hot pain. The scream building in his throat had no time to emerge. He sensed, rather than saw, the briefest glimmer of a shadow, or a silhouette, or just a flicker of negative space, as the hiss of a wooden sword, swung with inhuman speed, presaged the end of his life. The leading edge of the hard wooden blade crushed his larynx, choking off the cry and the last breath he would ever draw.

As he twitched and shuddered on the wet cobblestones, clutching at his throat, desperately trying to drag air in through the crumpled windpipe, his eyes, bulging and bloodshot, darted everywhere for sign of his assailants. But he died without ever truly seeing them.

32

HIJMS YAMATO, HASHIRAJIMA ANCHORAGE, 1324 HOURS, 10 JUNE 1942

Isoroku Yamamoto did not look up when he had finished studying the paper. Brasch and Hidaka sat as quietly as they had during the hour and a half it had taken the admiral to read the document. Yamamoto did not speak. He exhaled a long, slow breath, as though he had been holding it all along. He closed his heavy lidded eyes, and they remained closed for many minutes.

Brasch ventured an inquiring look at Hidaka, who shook his head wordlessly.

"You have exceeded my expectations, gentlemen," Yamamoto said at last.

The two officers, near exhaustion after a marathon work session, thanked him quietly.

Yamamoto held the ninety-page laser-printed document aloft. "As I predicted, this is worth more than your lives."

Hidaka remained motionless. Brasch sketched a sardonic lift of the eyebrows.

"Our lives aren't worth that much anyway, Admiral."

"Well put, Major. You would not like more time for research?"

"No point," Brasch said without embellishment. "We might flesh out the details and the argument, but the line of reasoning that lies at the core would remain unchanged. We weren't really undertaking original research. One of the ship's systems operators was able to direct us to a wealth of material prepared by scholars who had been picking over the rubble of this war for three generations. They wrote with the value of hindsight; we merely harvested their labor."

Hidaka leaned forward. "If I might, Admiral. This system's operator, a junior lieutenant named Damiri, has proved much more cooperative and useful than Moertopo. He seems to have a genuine hatred of the Americans. I suspect he may prove a more willing collaborator. Moertopo is trying to play us for fools."

Yamamoto held the paper with his deformed hand and flicked through it again, stopping here and there to reexamine a particular point or argument.