Spiral (3 page)

They were hundreds of miles from any landfall. They could go days without seeing a bird. But the bastard was headed straight for them. “Go,” Liam said. “Get out of here.”

Liam looked across the open water to the USS
Vanguard
. On the foredeck, the siege continued against the sailors who’d broken free and come out into the open. A group from amidships launched an assault, the sailors firing back, screaming expletives. They were completely mad.

Scilla was dead still, watching the goose through the binoculars.
“Keep going,”
he said.

Liam could make out the goose’s features now, the broad wingspan, the slow beating of the wings. Closer and closer it came, still high overhead but dropping slowly. Liam tried to will it away. “Keep going,” he murmured. “Keep flying.”

The goose didn’t listen. It did the worst thing possible. It turned toward the
Vanguard
, then descended in spirals of decreasing radius, a narrowing gyre. Both men watched it drop, stall, and finally settle gently onto the deck of the USS
Vanguard
.

“Damn it!” Scilla said.

Liam watched through binoculars as one of the men on the
Vanguard
leveled a gun at the bird.

“No, no, no,” Liam yelled, as if he could be heard across the expanse of ocean separating the two ships. “Get a tarp. Try to cover it.”

The soldier shot, missed.
The goose flew away.

A FAST CRUISER AND A DESTROYER WERE DISPATCHED TO
chase the goose, staying in continuous radio contact. They were barely able to match the bird’s speed running wide open, thirty-five knots. The destroyer even fired its four-inch guns at the bird, a ridiculously futile effort, like trying to shoot a fly with a rifle. It would have been laughable if the stakes hadn’t been so high. By the time they got the Vought OS2U Kingfisher scout planes in the air, the goose had disappeared into a cloud bank, and it hadn’t been seen since.

A quiet descended over the ship. The chase boats plied the waters, searching for the errant goose, the Kingfishers buzzing overhead. Calls had been put out, scrambling planes from Tokyo to join in the search.

Willoughby was nearby, his face red, talking to a major. “Imagine if the Russians have this,” he said. “The Russians were the first into Harbin. What if one of these cylinders ends up in Stalin’s hands? You think Uncle Joe wouldn’t use it?”

They were caught. If they did nothing, sooner or later the Uzumaki would spread beyond the confines of the
Vanguard
, either by a bird or spores carried by the wind. If they blew the ship up, they killed hundreds of men and ran the risk of spreading the Uzumaki even more widely. It was a devil’s deal.

Liam stared across the half-mile that separated them from the
Vanguard
. The screams of the infected sailors carried over the water.

If the Uzumaki was a doomsday weapon, a single goose could be the beginning of a catastrophe on a historic scale. The world had just survived the most brutal, destructive war in history. Could the worst be yet to come?

No
.

The Japanese must have a way to protect themselves. Liam couldn’t believe otherwise. An entire nation doesn’t commit suicide. And if they had a cure, Kitano knew about it. Kitano was hiding something—Liam sensed it. And he had an idea how to find out what it was.

He went below, to the room where Kitano was kept. Kitano had been forgotten in the goose excitement, left with a lone guard outside his door.

The guard stopped him. “No one’s allowed inside.”

“I’ve got authorization,” he lied.

“From who?”

“Willoughby.”

“I wasn’t told.”

“Everyone’s worried about the goose. It must’ve got dropped. You want me to—”

“No. It’s okay.”

LIAM TOOK A SEAT ACROSS FROM KITANO
.

“A goose landed on the
Vanguard
, then took off again. There’s a good chance it’s infected. It was last seen going north.”

No reaction. Kitano was exactly the same, the dead eyes, the even demeanor.

“Japan is to the north. That goose is headed toward Japan.”

No reaction.

God damn it
. Why wasn’t he reacting? The goose could easily find its way to Japan, a thousand or so miles to the north. It would devastate Japan. Why wasn’t Kitano upset?

Liam pushed him again about the Uzumaki, listened carefully as the grim-faced man told the same stories about the tests. At Liam’s insistence, Kitano carefully described every experiment he saw or heard about at Harbin. It was grisly, horrifying, and useless. Kitano described nothing that sounded like a trial for a vaccine or a cure. Only death after death.

Kitano stopped. “You realize you are wrong. There is no cure.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He saw something flicker in Kitano’s eyes. “Let me tell you about our tests at Ningbo, on the eastern coast of China, south of Shanghai. We used low-flying airplanes that dropped wheat laced with bubonic plague. With standard bubonic plague, nine in ten who contract the disease die. With the strain released on the people of Ningbo, ninety-nine out of one hundred died.”

“What is your point?”

“Seven of the team from Unit 731 were among the dead. The researchers contracted the disease themselves. They died. Ishii had no cure for bubonic plague. But that did not stop him. It did not stop us. We are not afraid to die, Mr. Connor. You must understand that, if you are to understand us.”

Liam studied Kitano, tried to look into his soul. Kitano was right—the entire nation of Japan worshipped death. Glorified it. Maybe it was true. The Japanese had shown time and time again an utter insensitivity to losses on their own side.
Could
they have launched these attacks with no cure? The Uzumaki was the ultimate Tokkō mission. The suicide attack of a nation, in order to bring down the entire world.

He stayed after Kitano, asking more questions. “Did any of the Tokkō ever mention a name besides Uzumaki?”
No
. “Did you ever see them take any medication? Anything?”
No
. “Aspirin?”
No
. “A powder?”
No
. “Anything?”
No
.

Liam had asked all these questions before. He felt as though they were stuck on a wheel, spinning around and around, twirling questions without getting any closer to the answer.

He stared at Kitano, his thin features, cheek swollen from his removed tooth. Then, apropos of nothing, two separate images came to him. The first was of an autoclave, a machine for sterilizing biological equipment.

The second image was of the medic handing out the penicillin tablets. They were of no use. The Uzumaki wasn’t bacterial. It was fungal.

A glimpse of the hem of the secret.

Liam chased the idea, followed it through.
Penicillium
. The most famous fungus in the world. In the early part of the war, thousands of soldiers died from bacterial infections. But after the Americans learned to mass-produce penicillin in 1943, Allied soldiers stopped dying. The antibiotic had an enormous impact on the war effort. Hardly an American or British soldier had not taken the drug by the time the war was over.

The Japanese had no penicillin. The Japanese died.

The Japanese had worked on it but had never gotten past the stage of producing the drug by the thimbleful. Probably not more than a handful of Japanese citizens had ever taken the drug.

What if that was the missing piece? The more Liam thought about it, the more sense it made. It was brilliant. Weakness to strength.

Liam met Kitano’s gaze. He stared at him for maybe thirty seconds. Then Liam said, “Penicillin.” He saw an involuntary flash of recognition in Kitano’s face. It was quickly gone, replaced by his dead stare.

A tingling ran up Liam’s spine. “You gave your test subjects penicillin, didn’t you?”

Kitano started to speak, stopped, faltered. Kitano’s hand was shaking. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Liam was on his feet. “You damn sure do, you bloody bastard.”

THE ENGINES WERE RUNNING FULL TILT WHEN LIAM MADE IT
to the bridge.

Penicillin. That was the difference. The Allies had penicillin. The Japanese did not. Penicillin was a miracle drug because it killed deadly bacteria that led to infections. But after a regimen of penicillin, the human digestive tract was also wiped nearly clean of beneficial bacteria. Yes, it killed off the problematic bacteria and saved your life. But it also wiped out the natural bacteria in you, including the ones that kept fungal invaders at bay. Leaving a person susceptible to fungal invasion. Yeast infections, oral thrush—all were common fungal infections that could flare up after a regimen of penicillin. Without the right gut bacteria, the human body was defenseless.

Defenseless, Liam now understood, to the Uzumaki.

“Tell everyone to stop taking penicillin now,” Liam yelled as he hit the bridge. “The penicillin makes you vulnerable for God knows how long.” Everyone on the bridge was busy, serious, barely acknowledging him. The USS
North Dakota
was turning away from the
Vanguard
. All the other ships were doing the same. “What’s going on?” Liam asked. “Is it the goose?”

“No,” Scilla said. “The goose landed on one of the chase ships. A sailor tossed a tarp over it, then beat it to death.” He handed Liam his binoculars. “Look at the stern.”

Liam took the binoculars, caught sight of the mayhem aboard the
Vanguard
. A few of the sailors were strung up by their necks. Others were beating them with bars of metal. Another was stabbing at the dangling bodies with a bayonet.

“It’s all broken loose. They are completely crazy,” Scilla said. “The captain of the
Vanguard
was screaming and ranting just before he cut off communications.” Scilla opened the watertight door to the control room. “Willoughby called in the bomber two hours ago. It’ll be here any moment.”

AT FIRST THE PLANE WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A DOT ON
the horizon.

“Are we far enough?” Liam heard a sailor ask nervously.

“We’re at five miles,” another said.

The plane grew larger, coming toward them in a perfectly straight line. Then the rumbling, the throaty burble of the props of the B-29 Superfortress.

Liam watched the B-29 pass directly overhead, impossibly high. A second dot appeared below it, separating, pulling away. It fell in a graceful arc, growing larger by the second, a stone tossed from heaven.

Bethe talked while it dropped. “Inside the bomb, a spherical shell of explosives will detonate. It is an implosion device, the explosives launching an inward shock wave, generating tremendous heat and pressure, compressing the plutonium encased inside, creating critical mass. It’s not so complicated, once you understand. Dear God, a talented undergraduate could design one.”

The bomb fell, a spear aimed from above. Just before it hit, a blinding flash. For the fourth time in human history, a nuclear chain reaction sparked into life, multiplied, and spread, vaporizing everything near it, pushing heat and air and dust into the heavens.

KITANO FELT THE PULSE RATTLE THROUGH THE SHIP LIKE A
giant hammer blow. He was thrown back, knocking his head hard against the bulkhead. He shook it off, put his focus back where it needed to be. This was his moment. Connor knew Kitano’s secret. He must act now.

His hands were cuffed together, but this was not an impediment. He took three sharp breaths, a Bushido technique to ready a warrior before a crucial act. Then he raised his hands and placed the middle finger of his right hand into his mouth. He set his teeth precisely at the joint, just as he had practiced a hundred times before, on live prisoners. With a sudden violent chomp, he bit through the meat, separating it at the gap between the proximal and medial phalange, as cleanly as when he had practiced with the fingers of prisoners.

The pain was nothing. Kitano was greater than pain.

He spit his finger out on the table, black spots before his eyes.

He focused on it, grabbed the bone and snapped it, using the edge of the table as a wedge. A small brass cylinder, as thin as a twig, protruded outward from the bone.

Kitano was bleeding profusely now. They could be here at any moment. But no matter. He needed just a few seconds more.

He heard a click. The door opened.

THE FIRST THING LIAM SAW WAS BLOOD SPLATTERED IN DROPS
on the metal floor. He glanced around the room. It was empty. Where was Kitano? Had he escaped?

Liam stepped inside, and Kitano blindsided him.

The impact drove Liam sideways into the wall. Liam felt something give in his shoulder and pain flared. He turned to fight, but Kitano caught him with a head butt, blood erupting into Liam’s eyes. Blind, Liam managed to shove Kitano away, giving himself a second to breathe.

But only a second. Kitano came at him, cuffed hands held over his head like a club. Liam ducked low and drove a shoulder into Kitano’s midsection, sending them both to the floor.

They fought silently, viciously. They traded blows for what seemed like hours but Liam would later estimate to be less than thirty seconds. In the end, Liam delivered the decisive strike. He got behind Kitano and ran him headfirst into the steel bulkhead adjacent to the door. Kitano fell to the floor, dazed, barely conscious.

Kitano was streaked with red. Blood was everywhere.

Liam tried to catch his breath. His shoulder ached. “You knew about the penicillin all along.”

Kitano didn’t answer. His eyes gave away nothing.

Liam looked around the room. Near his foot he saw a detached, bloody finger.

He grabbed Kitano’s hand. The right one. It was missing the last two sections of the middle finger.

What the hell?

Liam nudged the finger with his foot. He bent over, studying it. Sticking out of the flesh was a small brass object.

He pulled it free, wiped the blood off with his fingers. It was perhaps an inch long, threaded at the middle. A small brass cylinder, a miniature version of the ones that Kitano had described, the ones carried by the seven Tokkō. Cylinders containing the Uzumaki.