Spiral (2 page)

Liam was stunned. The British had run tests of anthrax at Gruinard Island off the coast of Scotland, tethering sheep and setting off anthrax bombs nearby. That seemed at the edge of what was too grisly to do. But field tests on humans? Entire cities? Hundreds of thousands of innocents killed? It was a terrible sin, far and away the most horrific germ weapons testing program in human history.

A medic knocked on the door, a tray of white tablets with him.

“What’s this?” Liam asked.

“Penicillin,” the medic said. “In case the sickness spreads here.”

“It won’t help,” Liam replied. “It’s fungal, not bacterial.”

The medic shrugged. “I have my orders. We’ve got everyone on a regimen, a pill every eight hours. You want it or not?”

Liam passed. Nothing would help. The Scotsman Fleming’s wonder drug was useless here. It would do absolutely nothing to stop a mycological infection.

The medic left, and Liam went back to his reading. The last ten pages were devoted to the crowning triumph of Unit 731, a fungal pathogen called the Uzumaki. Translation: spiral. According to Kitano, it was a doomsday weapon, to be used if the Americans threatened to overrun the home islands. Kitano was in charge of testing the Uzumaki on live subjects. It was highly virulent, spreading by the breath, spit, stomach juices, and fecal matter.

Kitano said that the latest version of the Uzumaki was kept in a sealed hinoki box, in seven small brass cylinders. A cylinder each for the seven chosen Tokkō. When the order came, each member of this elite suicide squad would board a submarine headed for their target. They would ingest the Uzumaki. Once it had taken hold, they would infect everyone they came in contact with.

The last section of the report was an evaluation of the likely authenticity of Kitano’s testimony. There had been reports as far back as 1943 of a Japanese germ weapons program in Manchuria. Kitano’s statements accurately matched descriptions of Unit 731 beginning to emerge from China. Shiro Ishii’s testimony also dovetailed with Kitano’s. The Japanese general was still alive and free, in negotiations with the Americans. He had offered to trade immunity for any war crimes in exchange for the records from Unit 731. Ishii did not know that the Americans also had Kitano, yet so far their stories matched quite closely. Overall, the likelihood that Kitano was telling the truth was judged to be very high.

Liam was dumbfounded, barely able to speak, when Scilla returned.

“Have any of the six other submarines been found? Any of the cylinders?”

Scilla shook his head no. “No one really believed any of it until the
Vanguard
. Until they found Seigo Mori on the deck of that sub.”

“How do you know his name?”

“From Kitano. I interviewed him myself yesterday.”

“Wait. He’s on board?”

Scilla nodded. “Willoughby likes to keep him close. Kitano said Mori was plucked from the University of Tokyo, trained to be a torpedo kamikaze. But they changed plans on him. Sent him to Harbin, to Unit 731, to that psychopath Ishii. Said he was nineteen years old.”

“Why attack now? Six months after the end of the war?”

“Maybe they didn’t know it was over. Our best guess is that the sub had mechanical troubles, ran out of fuel. Kitano says it was headed to the Pacific coast, up near the Washington-Oregon border. Mori was going to blow himself up at a major water supply. Think about it, Connor. Instead of a boatload of people with the Uzumaki, there’d be a city full. Maybe the entire damn United States.”

SCILLA LED LIAM TO THE COMMANDING OFFICER’S QUARTERS
. Four men were inside: the commander of the
North Dakota
, Admiral Seymour Arvo; Major General Charles Willoughby; and two others that Liam had not met before. Willoughby, looking like a cadaver, ran the show. Liam had heard that MacArthur called him “my pet Fascist.”

The other two men seemed familiar, but Liam couldn’t place them at first. Then he realized the one with a narrow face and regal features was J. Robert Oppenheimer. The other, with a round nose and probing eyes, was Hans Bethe. Two of the greatest physicists the Americans had. Both key players in the Manhattan Project.

The men were crammed around a small map table, the surface covered with papers haphazardly arranged. Liam noticed what looked to be equations on many of the sheets. He knew enough physics to recognize Bernoulli’s equation on one. Another had a sketch that looked like a shock wave.

Oppenheimer looked up. “This our fungal expert?”

“Liam Connor,” Scilla said. “From Porton.”

“Tell me,” the regal man said, “what is the maximum temperature a fungal spore can take and still be viable?”

“Depends on how long it’s hot,” Liam answered.

“Say a fraction of a second.”

“I’d say a hundred degrees.”

“A hundred degrees. You sure?”

“No, I’m not sure. It could be more. Why?”

“What about a shock wave?” asked Bethe. His accent was German. “Acceleration of, say, thirty g’s?”

“Probably wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t affect the spore at all.”

“What about radiation? Gamma rays?”

Liam realized what they had planned. “You’re going to blow up the
Vanguard
with an atomic bomb.”

“Unless you have a better idea,” Oppenheimer said.

HITOSHI KITANO WAS HELD IN A SMALL CABIN THAT NORMALLY
served as officers’ quarters. Two sailors stood guard outside. Liam was accompanied by one of Willoughby’s aides, a major named Anderson. He said few words but paid close attention, taking notes in a little red notebook.

Liam’s nerves were on edge. Bethe and Oppenheimer had grilled him for an hour about fungi and spores, trying to decide if a nuclear blast would destroy the Uzumaki or merely launch its spores into the upper atmosphere, where the jet stream would spread them around the world. The odds favored destruction, but the verdict was still out. Liam, in turn, had warned them of the dangers of
not
acting. If, as he suspected, the culprit was a
Fusarium
fungus, there was a good chance it could spread around the world without the help of a nuclear blast. Many species of
Fusarium
could thrive inside the guts of migratory fowl. A bird could be infected and then be a thousand miles away in days. The feathers of birds were a huge risk. They were ideal for carrying spores.

Kitano stood the moment Liam entered. He was very thin, his clothes hanging on him, his skin stretched over the angular bones of his face. His hands were cuffed together. His right cheek was noticeably swollen. Scilla told him he’d had an infected tooth. He’d refused any treatment, any medications, finally acquiescing to letting them pull it, minus any painkillers. They said he’d barely flinched.

They introduced themselves politely, Hitoshi Kitano’s English crisp and clear, accented but clearly understandable. Kitano sat with his back perfectly straight in his chair. Though no older than Liam himself, he looked ancient in a way that Liam couldn’t at first quite sort out. It was the eyes, Liam realized. His eyes seemed dead.

Liam had a number of questions for Kitano. Most prominent was how the Japanese would defend themselves against blowback from the Tokkō missions. Biological weapons were notoriously difficult to control. It was inconceivable to Liam that the Japanese would use a weapon as virulent as the Uzumaki if they didn’t have a way of protecting their own people. If it was a fungus native to Japan, they might be naturally resistant, or have an old folk remedy. Alternatively, scientists at Unit 731 might have developed a preventative, or even a cure. There were no good antifungals, Liam knew. But if you are willing to kill people, you might be able to develop one. You infect a prisoner, you try out a cure. You fail, you try again. If such a program existed at Unit 731, Liam was willing to bet that Hitoshi Kitano knew about it.

“I am a scientist—a mycologist,” Liam said. “I study fungi. Mushrooms. Molds.”

Kitano nodded. “My father was also a scientist, an ornithologist. He studied magpies mostly, but he also kept pigeons. My mother said he loved the birds more than her.”

“My wife has said the same sort of thing. About me and mushrooms.”

Kitano smiled slightly.

“I was told that your parents died at Nagasaki. I’m sorry.”

“Many died. On both sides.” Kitano tilted his head like a bird. “I learned an interesting fact from Professor Oppenheimer. He said that Nagasaki was not the original target. It was Kokura. But it was cloudy in Kokura, so they went on to Nagasaki.”

Liam tried to imagine what it must feel like to know that your family was dead because of the weather. War was a series of random catastrophes.

Liam got down to it. “At Unit 731 you worked on the Uzumaki. How did they create the different strains?”

“I am not a biologist. I was an engineer. I oversaw the tests. My understanding is they had some way to mix the traits. They could change the fungi. Make them adopt the properties of other fungi. They mixed the spores together with special chemicals. I do not know what kind.”

“Was it acidic? Basic?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you wear gloves?”

“Yes. Rubber gloves. And masks. After we made it airborne.”

“How did you do that?”

“We would inject the Uzumaki variants into the
maruta
, wait for the madness to take hold.”

“Maruta?”

“The prisoners were
maruta
. Logs.”

“Logs? I don’t understand.”

“The official story is that Unit 731 was a lumber mill. We were cutting logs. We could have as many logs as we wished. We simply filled out a requisition form.”

Liam tried to contain his loathing for the man in front of him. The bureaucracy of genocide. It was not unlike the German death camps, the experiments of Mengele. People became chunks of flesh to be manipulated, tortured, disposed of like rats.

Kitano continued. “After we infected them, we had them breathe on a glass slide. Then the doctors cultivated the spores on the slides. It took many tries, but finally it worked. A variant that was both highly infectious and could be spread by the breath. We called this
maruta
the Mother. The Mother of the Uzumaki.”

“How many tries did it take?”

“Perhaps three, four hundred.”

“You killed hundreds of people in the tests?”

“For the Uzumaki, we killed eight hundred and seventeen before we had the breather. But there were many programs like this. We downed approximately ten thousand
maruta
overall.”

“Ten thousand? How could you stand it? It’s inhuman. Monstrous.”

“Perhaps. But the subjects at Unit 731 were well treated, well fed. Not like the other POW camps. Typically we injected them with the pathogen, systematically varying the dose. Then we watched as the disease progressed through them. It was very effective. Different strains could be crossed endlessly, the most deadly variants carefully selected by injecting them into prisoners and culturing the blood of those who died the fastest. After they began to show symptoms, we would take constant readings. Temperature, blood pressure, reaction times. Some we would dissect.”

“After they were dead.”

“No. While they were alive.”

Liam was aghast. “Why in God’s name would you do that?”

“To yield the most accurate picture. Anesthetic causes biochemical changes, affects the blood, the organs. As does death.”

“It’s murder. Sadistic, inhuman murder.”

“Research, Mr. Connor. Very important research.”

Kitano spoke as if he was describing the dissection of a frog. Liam took a deep breath, tried to keep his focus. “Who were the subjects?”

“Some were spies. Others criminals. The rest were Chinese civilians we took from the streets of the surrounding cities. The soldiers would unload the
maruta
and go back out again.”

“And then you would kill them.”

Kitano smiled condescendingly. “This was our task, Lieutenant Connor. Developing new weapons. Testing them. The scientists at Unit 731 were no different from your physicists developing the atomic bomb. Seigo Mori was no different than the American pilot that flew the mission that destroyed Nagasaki.” Kitano leaned forward, cuffed hands on the table before him. “He was a gentle man, Mr. Connor. Everyone liked him. His father was a factory worker who died when he was only three. He often told me stories about his mother and older sister, how they both doted over him, the only man in the house. He wished to be a poet. But he was willing to die.”

Liam asked the question he’d been waiting to ask. “You must have a way to stop the Uzumaki. To protect Japan.”

“No.”

“But if it found its way back to Japan, it would kill millions of your own people. How could you risk that?”

“We had no choice. The Uzumaki was the last resort. To be used when everything else was lost. When Japan had nothing left to lose. The Uzumaki is—how do you say it?—a doomsday weapon. Once released, it cannot be stopped.”

A PAIR OF SAILORS ON DECK ON THE
NORTH DAKOTA
POINTED UP
.

Liam followed the path of their gaze but saw nothing but clear blue sky. He was talking to Scilla about what he’d learned from Kitano. Scilla, in turn, was telling Liam about the latest developments on the
Vanguard
, and the news wasn’t good. The captain was keeping everyone belowdecks to minimize the risk of the spread of the Uzumaki, but a group of sailors, almost certainly infected, had stolen guns and were holed up topside on the foredeck. They’d already killed three other sailors who’d tried to stop them. Liam was incensed that they were out in the open. Sooner or later, a spore would catch an air current, drift across the water, and infect one of the other ships.

Liam continued to study the patch of sky that the sailors were pointing to. It took a good minute before he saw it.

At first it was hardly more than a black speck moving slowly across the wide expanse.

“No,” Liam said. “No. No. No.”

Scilla grabbed a pair of binoculars. “It’s a damned goose,” he said.