The Call of the Thunder Dragon (39 page)

The British thought the Burmese
peasantry ignorant and superstitious and so the authorities
rejected idea that there were political causes for the
rebellion.

British rule of Burma survived
the rebellion and Assam remained unchanged by the two years of
uncertainty experienced by its eastern neighbour. In Burma Saya
San, the Galon Raja, was remembered as a hero, his cause economic
and justifiable. The Japanese took note of this while the British
reports recorded the rebellion as aimless.

Wisps of cloud torn to shreds by
the saw-like ridges drifted by as they hummed through the sky.
There was less to see now, just tree after tree populating the
thinning jungle. Zam was less inclined to wave or cheer at the
upland tribes after the missiles had been thrown with such ire
towards her. After another hour and a half, she was tiring of the
cold sting of the wind and burning glare of the sun. She retreated
into the cabin to prepare tea and rice.

Falstaff kept his eye on the
compass as they headed west. This was the limit of the British
Empire. It didn’t look pink at all; not as portrayed on the map.
Both sides of the border were an innocuous dark green. A wall of
jungle wilderness that had halted all further British expansion to
the east. The Maps reached as far as Mandalay, the land to the east
occupied by the Karen hill people, who lived on the ridges and
jungle covered peaks stretching down through Burma as far as
Thailand. That part of the map was marked off as ‘extensive hilly
tracts’, ‘occupied by savage tribes’ while on the pink side of the
line was cricket and parasols, or so the books would have you
believe.

Talk of flesh eaters, people with
ferocious tattoos burnt into their flesh with red-hot irons, in
order to prepare them for the cruel mountain life, had kept contact
between the crickets and the mountain people to a minimum for more
than a century.

Falstaff nervously started to
keep his attention on the fuel gage that was rapidly approaching
zero. He realised after their encounter on the lake that the
stories were all too true.

As Assam approached, they started
to see larger villages. Some of the children now returned Zam’s
wave, as their mother’s urged them to turn their backs on the
unnatural machine. Falstaff saw monks drumming in hill top
monastery, he strained to hear the drums of monks of Krishna, but
they stopped as they flew over. The noise of Falstaff’s engines
interrupting their call beat out on the drums. Falstaff was glad
they were nearing civilization.

Captain Akira had flown the
Dolphin as instructed; he took orders from whichever intelligence
task force he was working for, in this case, the that meant Colonel
Haga-Jin. They were moored on the wide Bhogdoi River as they had
been for several days, Jorhat was a short walk away. They were
refuelled and ready to go.

Colonel Haga-Jin hadn’t been seen
for several days. Likewise, Captain Soujiro and the other injured
and exhausted men had taken up rooms in a traveller's hotel, run by
Japanese staff. The only fit men had taken a car and their field
radio and driven through the Tea Plantations along the Bhogdoi
River to the south east with an agent from Jorhat. They reported
seeing nothing at regular, monotonous intervals. The Captain, was
becoming concerned that transmissions would be attracting attention
and told sent a note to the Colonel telling him so.

The Colonel and the Captain had
each convalesced taking advantage of the hospitality of Jorhat, at
the Jorhat Palace hotel in the administration district approved by
the local administration. Surrounded by the luxury, business men,
officers and superintendents stayed oblivious to the Japanese
visitors or the hotel staff who gave them preferential
treatment.

The Colonel’s self-esteem was at
low. His escapades in Burma had not gone unnoticed there.
Haga-Jin’s agitation caused his stomach to churn. He’d been warned
by his superiors to stay out of Burma. He had been in danger of
upsetting ongoing plans in Burma, plans that had been moved forward
due to the friendly reception by from the Burmese. Riled, he’d been
forced to silence his own rage. How could his superiors consider
the words or the support of any non-Japanese to be of greater value
than his?

To make matters worse, he knew
the plans they were referring to. He had been involved with
demonstrations to the now head of a special intelligence unit,
called Minami Kikan formed in order to support a national uprising
in Burma, Colonel Suzuki
⁴⁶
. Such a mission was
not to Haga-Jin’s taste but given his intelligence network along
the Chinese border and Yunnan neighbouring Burma he had felt
snubbed.

He might not be a product of
Nakano School, now the primary training centre for military
intelligence operations run by the Imperial Japanese Army. Haga-Jin
felt he’d been in the field long enough. He had started many years
before running a forward intelligence unit in on Chinese-Korea
border.

However, the Imperial Japanese
Army now placed a high priority on the use of unconventional
military tactics the Nakano School specialised in. From before the
First Sino-Japanese War, Japanese operatives, posing as
businessmen, Buddhist missionaries in China, Manchuria and even
Russia established detailed intelligence networks for production of
maps, recruiting local support and gathering information on
opposing forces.

Haga-Jin had employed Japanese
spies as personal servants to enemy officers or as ordinary
construction labourers, they reported back to him directly; such
matters now fell under the oversight of the 2nd Section of the
Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office.

Conflict was constantly developing
between the two authorities at the top of the system, if anything
the army operation in China resented having to defer authority of
intelligence operations to a second command structure and cared
little for wider intelligence missions occupied with gathering
useful ‘intelligence’ for other schemes.

If the Army could operate
perfectly it, should be according to a purely hierarchical system
Haja-Jin argued. He had discussed the point with Captain Soujiro,
who having no experience outside of the Army agreed with him.

Colonel Haga-Jin would have
preferred to come across the border with an army. The Burmese
response would have be measured, if they hadn’t helped to run down
the fugitive pilot then the Japanese army could have taken control
of the mountain passes. Neither the British nor the Burmese could
have done anything about it.

A remote corner of Burma occupied
to halt the war in China and Falstaff would have been the pretext
to do it. He’d seen no British presence or any Burmese authorities
so far. Haga-Jin let his train of thought conclude with a sigh of
resentment.

The Colonel and his men arrived
back at the river that afternoon, intending to make use of new
intelligence.

Curiosity getting the better of
Akira, he finally had a chance to ask the Colonel why they had been
waiting in Jorhat.

“Hai, Captain Akira! I thank you
for your patience, - it was confirmed with Burma this morning,
Falstaff and his woman Zam left this morning on route to Jorhat. My
men are now on their way back here. They spotted the three engined
Caproni machine about twenty minutes ago. Now I gave instructions
for you to be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. I trust you
are ready, now?”

“Hai! Colonel-Dono!” Akira rushed
to the cockpit, waking his co-pilot. The Engines had been started
and run regularly and were still warm from the last check.

Captain Akira fastened himself in
ready to start the engines. Captain Soujiro boarded last and pulled
the door to. Akira revved up and turned into the flow of the river.
It was a wide, slow river and for a long stretch, ran straight past
the city of Jorhat.

They were in the air in moments,
keeping low he headed north-west away from the Caproni’s
approach.

“What heading?” He pressed the
intercom to his throat.

Captain Soujiro came on to the
intercom, sounding confident; he read out their destination.
“Bhutan! We’re going to Bhutan!”

Soujiro smiled at the Colonel who
gripped the book Soujiro had retained from the lake shore hotel
back in China; its register. Circled in red was one entry: Princess
Karma Zam of Paro, daughter of Lord Lang Druk of Dzongkhag and
friend...

Abe watched the Dolphin watched
it fly away, lifting off the smooth surface of the slow running
river. With him remained, the paratrooper from Hokkaido, Goemon and
Ono Itchi the silent dragon.

Abe looked back at the tall, thin
face of the assassin, which he had called ‘uncle’. He looked every
bit the wily killer he was supposed to be. In fact a former Yakuza
enforcer. Missing one finger on his left hand due to a past
misadventure, who had joined the Japanese civil police in Manchuria
and then had taken the opportunity to use his skills further by
taking a promotion to Japanese intelligence, or allowed them use of
his extraordinary skills.

Paratrooper Lieutenant Goemon,
Captain Soujiro’s right-hand man, had been left in nominal charge
as the sole military member of the remaining team. Ono Itchi was,
in fact, senior and more skilled in every way. He was the team’s
primary weapon against Falstaff, who he was to assassinate.

The open top car rolled to halt
beside the river junction where the tributary Tocklai met the river
Bhogdoi. The Dolphin flying boat rose from the river to disappear
from sight. The driver started the car accelerated, following the
riverside lane.

The driver was a local agent, an
assistant steward at the Jorhat Gymkhana Club. He’d worked his way
up from busboy nearly ten years before. The club was a British
establishment and hosted the oldest golf course in Asia and of
those still running as a golf club, the oldest in the world.

The Jorhat Gymkhana Club had been
opened in 1876 by one of the founding members a scotch man, David
Slimmon then secretary of the Jorhat club and keen sportsman. He
brought with him: golf, tennis, billiards, bridge, race weeks,
flower shows, seasonal balls and a Burns night; and of course
whiskey, McEwan’s India Pale Ale and ubiquitous bar gossip.

Maka-Kiski-San, known locally as
Mckinson; or Maka, had become a keen golfer himself, however, his
responsibility, as a Japanese agent, was to keep tabs and records
of all the club’s members and visitors and details of the club
revenues. Should Japan ever come to rule India, the club was
considered to be a valuable asset. Maka dreamed of the day Japan
would come to free India from the British and the day he could
claim the post of club manager and able to play and take part in
the Jorhat Gymkhana Golf competition and lift the trophy as a
winner instead of a caddy.

The club, apart from golfers
attracted visitors from all over India, it was a must see place
when in Assam. So the when the first aeroplane on north-eastern
soil was landed in Jorhat in 1928 it was celebrated in the
clubhouse. The first asphalt road in Jorhat was named 'Club Road',
connecting the town to the Clubhouse. The road attracted as many
flyers as it did cars.

Maca turned the car off the
riverside track onto the road around the east side of the golf
course and racetrack. The car bounced as it went over the railway
tracks that ran North towards Jorhat railway station or south-east
to Mariani.

“We’ll go back to the Clubhouse
and wait. This Falstaff will either land on one of the rivers or he
may take notice of the windsock and signs beside Club Road. It is
best if we do not attract attention to ourselves immediately.” Maka
suggested.

“I agree,” Was all Ono said. His
face stony, giving away nothing of his thoughts on the approaching
quarry.

Goemon wasn’t consulted and the
broad-shouldered junior officer remained silent and brooding as
they drove back around the gravel track around the edge of the golf
course.

The golf club had its own horse
racing circuit, where the Governor's Cup race was hosted annually
in the first week of February. There was also four lush green grass
tennis courts, so the club always required good gardeners and
groundsmen. They left Lieutenant Goemon, now dressed in civilian
clothes and employed as a gardener, on the asphalt road to watch
for Falstaff.

Goemon, played along, reluctantly
left at the side of the road with a rake and sack to collect fallen
leaves. He watched the others drive their way up club road with a
frustrated sigh. Originally he’d come from a farming family in
Hokkaido, but the coming of big modern dairy farms had changed the
way the land was used. At seventeen, he had left Hokkaido
altogether and joined the army as a professional. Until he’d jumped
with Colonel Haga-Jin into Simao, he thought he knew what he was
doing. Most of his career he spent in training; he was a good
leader, bonding with the men and had naturally risen in the ranks,
then he’d spent two years as an instructor before getting his
promotion that had attached him to Captain Soujiro’s command. He’d
taken part in the raids behind the lines at Foochow and spent the
next six months fighting around the city port, rooting out
destructive rebels.

Now he didn’t know what he was
doing anymore. The behaviour of the Colonel disturbed him. He
thought the Colonel two faced and unfocused. The longer Captain
Soujiro served with him, the longer he too seemed to be drawn into
Haga-Jin’s increasingly feverish schemes.

Goemon was familiar with the
terms of accountability for the modern soldier. He was even
familiar with Geneva Convention, even though Japan had never
ratified it and never would, seeing as how it contradicted with not
only the treatment of prisoners but their treatment of their own
soldiers.