The Ambassador's Son Read online

  Penelope’s lap-lap stopped its mesmerizing hula. “Josh darling,” she whispered over her bare shoulder. “Do you see the Japoni?”

  Josh had healthy eyes of which he was most proud, but he’d seen nothing for the last hour other than a jumble of bush and trees and tall waving grass and Penelope’s fetching backside. He took a long look around, recognizing that it was his peripheral vision that tended to pick out the unusual or a pattern that didn’t fit. Before long, he was astonished to discern quite clearly a Japanese soldier squatting just off the path Penelope had recently started following. The soldier was the same color as the long saw grass in which he hid, a sickly brownish-green. His uniform was tattered, his bony knees poked through his trousers, and his bare arms and face were plastered with dirt. His large oval eyes rolled in their direction beneath his soft cap. He adjusted himself, a skeletal hand going to his stomach.

  “Now you see him, don’t you?” Penelope whispered. “I have seen him for the longest time.”

  “He is almost surely booby-trapped,” Josh replied, ignoring Penelope’s comment about the perfection of her vision. “That is why he’s so near the path. From the looks of him, he’s been gut-shot and left to take the first American or coast-watcher with him to Japoni heaven.” Josh withdrew his pistol from its holster, meaning to take care of the situation.

  Penelope stayed his hand. “Josh darling, I am certain even at this range you could drill the Japoni with your pistol, for, my word, with all your other talents, you must certainly be an extremely good shot. But the noise would only bring more Japoni for you to kill. No, it must be a silent death.”

  “But he will blow himself up if you get near him.”

  “I do not think so. I will speak to him.”

  “Can you speak Japanese?”

  Penelope gave Josh a contemptuous glance, her first, he would later reflect. “Josh darling, there are times when I believe you do not comprehend your good fortune at falling into the company of yours very truly.”

  Before Josh could stop her, Penelope was striding down the path, slowing as she neared the soldier, who watched her with his huge eyes, his mouth a crooked line of pain. She knelt a dozen feet away from him, plunging the point of her machete into the soft earth. Josh could hear that she was talking to the soldier but could not understand her words or even what language she was speaking, though it was in a soft, melodious tone. The soldier replied, his voice like the snapping of small, dry twigs. Then he began to search his pockets. Josh raised his pistol, but Penelope, even though her back was to him, held up her hand as a signal for him to do nothing. Josh was wondering if she had eyes in the back of her pretty head. Nothing much about Penelope, he thought, would surprise him.

  The Japanese soldier held something up to Penelope, a pouch of some kind. Penelope came closer and took the pouch from his bony hands, inspected its contents, then gave it back to him. She pulled her machete out of the ground and walked back to Josh. “He has been here for a day and a night and now a part of another day. He is in much pain and is ready to die. His fellows left him with a grenade. He hopes to use it to kill an American.”

  “He told you all this?” Josh asked, and though he didn’t mean it to, a note of doubt crept into his tone.

  “A dying person speaks so that all may understand,” she answered in a quiet voice. “He showed me a photograph of his wife and children.”

  Josh pushed his cap to the back of his head and wiped his sweaty brow with his sleeve. The humidity was so thick, it was like breathing steam. “We can’t wait all day for him to die,” he said, “and I can’t just leave him here. What if an American patrol should come by? He could hurt somebody.”

  Penelope placed a finger to the corner of her mouth as she gave the matter some thought. “I will explain this to him,” she said, and headed down the path before Josh could stop her. She squatted a few feet from the soldier and started talking. His eyes grew concerned as she fluttered her hands and flung her arms around in animated conversation. He said a few words and then, to Josh’s astonishment, smiled.

  She returned. “He understands.”

  “Understands what?”

  “I explained to him that you were an American but you were not a proper one for him to kill since you were not here to fight, that you were looking for a lost man and a lost woman and to kill you would be a waste of his grenade. He said it was a sad thing. He so hoped to kill an American. Then I told him that it is a lovely day, a good day to go to his ancestors, though he should let nature take its course and go quietly.”

  “And you think he agreed?”

  “Why not?”

  “Penelope dear, I think you are an optimist.”

  “I hope that is a compliment.”

  “I do, too.”

  Penelope’s lips turned down. “Sometimes I think you are a cruel man.”

  “I’m sorry—get down!”

  The soldier had managed somehow to get to his feet and, hunched over, was staggering in their direction. Josh pushed Penelope beneath him just as the grenade the soldier was carrying exploded. It wasn’t a powerful explosion (Japanese grenades were notorious for being duds), and all it did was fling the man off the path while thoroughly making a greater mess of his stomach. A small, hot fragment of the grenade landed on Josh’s hand. He flung it off while the Japanese soldier’s bloody chest heaved once, then went still.

  “Well, so much for him dying quietly, little miss optimist.”

  “It was because you’re an American, even though I explained you were not a proper one,” Penelope retorted, neatly transferring the blame. “Would you climb off me now? There is a sharp rock beneath me, and it hurts.”

  Josh climbed to his feet and helped Penelope up. He pondered the Japanese soldier. “What an idiot,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Why do you call him such a name?” she demanded. “He was very brave.”

  “Too brave. A soldier who is willing to follow orders certain to get himself killed is a bad soldier. Such soldiers make for lazy officers who throw them away at the enemy, hoping to get lucky. That’s the problem with the Japanese in this war. They think dying is the answer, and it is, I suppose, if the question is How can I lose the war?”

  “You have clearly given war a great deal of thought,” Penelope said. “I think you love war. That is the only reason why you are here.”

  Josh was taken aback by her accusation. “That isn’t true! I am here because I was ordered here. I would like nothing more than to be back home.”

  “Where is that?”

  “A wild place off the coast of North Carolina. It’s called Killakeet Island.”

  “Would you take me there?”

  “To Killakeet? But it’s on the other side of the world.”

  “I am not afraid to travel.”

  “It is often cold there. It has even been known to snow.”

  “Then I would wear a coat.”

  Josh studied her. “Have you ever worn a coat?”

  “No, but I like to do new things.”

  Josh allowed an interval of thinking, looking for the harm of being agreeable. When he couldn’t find any, he said, “I would be proud to have you visit Killakeet.”

  And there was that lovely smile again, which warmed Josh’s heart. “We should go now,” Penelope said.

  “To Killakeet?”

  “No, silly man. I was referring to the here and now. The sound of the grenade must surely have stirred up the Japoni.”

  It was a point that Josh had momentarily overlooked. “Let’s go,” he said, and so they did. Up a rise, around a bend, down a bank, and after that Josh lost track of where Penelope might be leading him. He was tired and hot and sweaty, and he wondered if he was coming down with a fever. He’d escaped malaria up to now, but in the Solomons, one never knew.

  Penelope finally brought them to a small stream. “Here the water is clean and we can drink,” she said. “And we should rest here, beneath this poisonfish tree, which allows us exc
ellent shade and a bit of coolness.”

  Josh observed the shiny leaves and the white, sweetly scented blossoms of the tree and thought them poor cover for the sun or bullets, though he didn’t comment. Penelope picked up one of the brown, squarish fruits littering the ground. ‘These are the seeds we use to poison fish. Thus the name of this tree.”

  “Very interesting,” he said, feeling his forehead. It was surprisingly cool. Maybe he wasn’t coming down with fever after all. Maybe he was just going crazy.

  Penelope sat beneath the shade of the tree and patted the ground by its roots. “Sit beside me.”

  Josh sat and, in the waving shadow, rested and even slept. When he awoke, he found Penelope cradling his head in her lap, looking down at him with an expression he couldn’t quite define. “You are a pretty girl,” he observed.

  “I know where he is,” she replied. “Your Lieutenant Armistead. He is with Joe Gimmee.”

  Josh sat up. “But that’s what Whitman said, and you denied it.”

  Penelope shrugged, her smooth shoulders rising and falling in the dappled sunlight. It was all Josh could do to keep from putting his hands on those lovely shoulders and drawing them near. “Do you know where Joe Gimmee is?” he asked. “It isn’t Australia, is it?”

  She ran her long fingers through his hair and to the back of his neck, while her eyes took on a dreamy look. His hands, as if outside his control, slid around her back. “He is not in Australia but he is far away,” she whispered into his ear. “And Joe Gimmee demands much of those who find him.”

  His nostrils were filled with her wonderful scent. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he croaked.

  “I have been trying to make up my mind about you.”

  “In what way?”

  “I want you to do something for me,” she said. “I want you to kill Mastah Whitman. Then I will guide you to Joe Gimmee.”

  Josh was startled, and his hands dropped away from her. “Why do you want me to kill Whitman?”

  Her expression of dreaminess disappeared, replaced by an expression that could only be defined as pure hatred. “Because of what he is.”

  Josh was thoroughly confused. “What is he?”

  She studied his face. “Lie on me again.”

  “Stop changing the subject. Tell me. What is Whitman?”

  Penelope sat back against the poisonfish tree. “Whitman boys kai-kai along Japoni, kai-kai along pickaninny, kai-kai even along Americans. I have seen them do this.”

  “Kai-kai?” Josh searched through his knowledge of pidgin until he thought he recalled the word. It made his stomach sink. “Penelope, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “They are all cannibals,” she replied.

  “But surely not Whitman!”

  “Especially he.”

  29

  The Rufe pilot aimed his float plane at Dosie, then jinked around and cut across her at an extreme angle, so nimbly and fast neither Phimble in the nose turret nor any of the boys at the blister guns could get a bead on him. He sped off, then turned around to make another run. Once again, his acrobatics kept him out of Dosie’s gun sights, and he flashed so low across the Catalina that the thunder of the Rufe’s engine nearly broke their ear drums. “How come he ain’t firing at us?” Stobs wondered while rubbing his ears.

  “He is looking for me,” Ichikawa, who was tied up alongside Fisheye, explained. “The next time, he probably will shoot. We are all going to die.” He said the last words with quiet satisfaction.

  “Maybe not,” Phimble said, crawling out of the forward turret to snatch Ichikawa by his arm. He half dragged, half pushed him through the hatch, then towed him to the beach. “Here he is!” Phimble yelled at the sky, just as the Rufe suddenly appeared out of nowhere and barreled overhead, the prop wash throwing up a storm of sand.

  With a proud, fierce expression, Ichikawa said, “That is Kyushu, one of my best pilots.”

  The Rufe, now just a speck in the clear blue sky, turned and set up another run. On it came, growing ever larger, but then the pilot of the Rufe rocked the wings of his aircraft and gunned for altitude.

  “So!” Ichikawa cried, then sucked air between his teeth. “I am disappointed in Kyushu. He should have fired his guns.”

  “Maybe he thinks you’re more valuable than a few Americans and an old beat-up wreck of a float plane.”

  Ichikawa threw back his shoulders and stuck out his chin. “There is nothing less important than my life.”

  “You are an odd duck, Ichikawa-san,” Fisheye said, as he and Stobs climbed out of the Catalina. “Such a thing to say.”

  “And a worse thing to believe,” Stobs added.

  “It is what I believe,” Ichikawa replied, and then fell silent, their opinions putting him into something of a pout.

  “So now what?” Stobs asked, as the Rufe grew smaller, then disappeared.

  “So now we’d better get out of here,” Phimble answered, executing the Solomons salute when a swarm of mosquitoes came after him. “Most likely, Jap will be back, but I’ll bet next time with a boat. Stobs, keep working on your radio. Fisheye, back to work on the engine, old son.”

  Fisheye nodded. “I figured out the problem is a fuel line, Mister Phimble. It broke, and that’s what caused the fire. But I’ve got no way to fix it that won’t allow a leak. Besides that, I think the pistons are likely scored.”

  “All I need is for that engine to work long enough to get us into the air.”

  “Even if I got it running, it couldn’t be trusted. It could conk out just as you got up on the step.”

  Phimble studied the cone of the volcano. “We might should abandon Dosie and disappear up there as best we can.”

  “But we’d be stuck here forever,” Stobs pointed out. “And Jap would likely track us down anyway.”

  Phimble gave it all a good think but no solution presented itself. “I’m open to suggestions,” he said.

  “You could let me go,” Ichikawa suggested.

  “What good would that do?” Phimble demanded. “Your pals will still come to rescue you.”

  “That is true,” Ichikawa said, though in a sad tone. “And I would be duty bound to help them kill you.”

  “Kill us?” Fisheye was astonished. “That just knocks me on my can. Here I was, planning on inviting you to Killakeet after the war. I figure you for a man who likes to fish.”

  “I do like to fish.” Ichikawa glanced away from Fisheye, as if ashamed to look the boy in the eye. “I like nothing better,” he mumbled.

  “Stop jawing and get to work, Fisheye,” Phimble ordered. “I don’t think you’re going to change Ichikawa’s mind about anything.”

  Fisheye stared at Ichikawa. “You’re not much of a friend,” he accused.

  The pilot looked stricken, then gave the mechanic a slight bow. “I regret circumstances dictate our present relationship.”

  “Yeah. I’ll bet.” Fisheye climbed up on the wing, happy to go back to the engine even if it was beat to death and unlikely to ever work again. At least he understood the blamed thing!

  Stobs took charge of Ichikawa and allowed him to use a bush for a bathroom break, then asked him politely to sit down. “I’ll boil up some coffee,” Stobs said, but the Japanese pilot didn’t reply. His face was contorted. “What’s with you?” Stobs demanded.

  “Nothing,” Ichikawa answered, but it was clear there was something.

  “What?”

  “I am struggling with my conscience,” he said at length.

  “Maybe you ought to get one first,” Stobs suggested, then got busy making the coffee.

  PART III

  Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.

  —James, chapter 4, verse 2

  30

  I have a wog fever and I am on a wog ship on a wog sea.

  Thus Missus Felicity Markham summarized her situation as a snarling storm did its best to put
the Minerva on the bottom of the Solomon Sea, and a fever to kill her. At times in her life, fever had almost been welcome as an old friend, taking her far away from the cares of the plantation to a different, fantastic dream world. It was said that the old Indians of America had done much the same in their heathen sweat boxes, and the Finns in their saunas. Now, though, the fever and the storm were misfortunes fate had placed upon her, to impede her in her return to Noa-Noa. But neither fever nor storm would keep her from going home. She cast her eyes toward the sky and studied the gathered black clouds. She raised her chin and felt the risen breeze. She bared her teeth to the pelting rain. She knew very well who had sent the filthy weather, and she laughed into the creature’s wind and its black sky. You’re a wog, aren’t you? she asked God, a suspicion she’d had for a very long time. After all, why else would you have made so many of them? “Well, you great beastly wog, you won’t beat me down. Not this white woman!”

  “Mother, what’s wrong?” John-Bull asked through the howling wind and crashing waves. He was standing beside her, a hand clutching her flailing skirt.

  She resisted the fever even as God tried to force it into her brain. It was a heroic gesture and she knew it and it thrilled her. She wanted to laugh at God, the pitiful creature, but she had work to do and no time. “Get into the gig, John. Prepare for the worst whilst I try to avoid it.”

  “But I’d like to remain on deck!” John-Bull cried.

  Felicity understood the boy’s wish. The Minerva’s deck was pitching and rolling and if one did not have any other responsibilities, or fever, or a battle with the wog too many called God, it could be enjoyed indeed as a thrilling ride. John-Bull was protected from the driving rain by a poncho some Marine Raider had given him, or perhaps he’d pinched it on the sly. No matter. He stood absolutely fearless, a miniature version of his father. It made her pulse race to see Bryce appear so clearly through their son, that same wicked grin, eyes alight, soaking in the danger and reveling in it. Oh, Bryce, she thought. For you. For us.