And so by June of 1944, Parece Kito was home to a regiment of Japanese Marines, a sprawling underground bunker complex, and an interwoven system of eight-inch gun batteries designed to decimate any landing force trying to enter its lagoon.
Alas, the guns never fired a shot in anger.
They and the troops remained on Parece Kito, unused and ignored until the end of the war thirteen months later, when the island’s commander received word of the Empire’s surrender. The closest it had come to seeing an invasion force were three overflights by U.S. Navy PBYs, whose photos convinced Nimitz to bypass the island and let it wither on the vine.
Six weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a dozen ships arrived at Parece Kito, took aboard the demoralized Japanese troops, and transported them back to internment camps in Japan. The guns were destroyed in place, and the bunker complex was sealed, an overnight ghost town.
It was to this island, over fifty years later, that Walter Oaken was sending Briggs Tanner and Ian Cahil on the trail of Tsumago.
After reaching the airstrip outside Iyo, they had boarded the charter plane awaiting them, and three hours later, they touched down at a rural airstrip on Okinawa. They were cleared through customs without incident, and Tanner assumed that either Takagi had not yet contacted the Okinawan authorities or Oaken had pulled some of his own strings. They found a secluded phone booth and called Oaken.
“I wish we had Tsumago’s helm data to confirm it, but this is about as close as we’re going to get,” Oaken began. “The log listed Tsumago as sailing eight times in the last six months, average duration three days, give or take twelve hours.”
Armed with the ship’s cruising speed of twenty knots and the longest time she’d been gone (eighty-five hours), Oaken had multiplied the two figures and halved the answer, leaving a maximum one-way range of 950 miles. With the shipyard at its center, the arc encompassed eastern China, Korea, Taiwan, all of Japan, and a good-sized chunk of the Pacific Ocean, including thousands of tiny, uninhabited islands.
Oaken checked all the major ports in Korea, China, and Japan for record of Tsumago’s docking. He found nothing. Like her sister ship Toshogu, Tsumago was a ghost. So why, he asked, wouldn’t Takagi use similar methods to hide her existence and destination? It was the right question.
Like Toshogu, which had been purchased by Skulafjord Limited, a secret subsidiary of Takagi Industries, Tsumago had been purchased by yet another secret Takagi holding called Caraman Exports, among whose many offshoots was a company called Daito Properties. Daito openly owned real estate in Taipai, Malaysia, and Sumatra. It was one of Daito’s buried holdings that interested Oaken, however, namely a small 100-acre island in the Philippine Sea called Parece Kito.
“It has no real value,” Oaken explained. “No mineral deposits, no tourist attraction… nothing. But it does fall into the nine hundred-mile arc, and it’s in the middle of nowhere.”
“How much trouble did Takagi go to keep this place secret?” Tanner asked.
“Lots. If I hadn’t been looking for something specific, I wouldn’t have found it.”
Tanner looked at Cahil, who said, “We either check it or go home.”
Briggs didn’t feel like going home. “How do we get there, Oaks?”
Oaken’s itinerary sent them on a flight from Okinawa to the Bonin Islands and finally to Asuncion Island in the Marianas, where he’d arranged a charter boat for the final 300-mile leg. It had taken a tripled fee and a substantial deposit to convince the owner of the company, Mr. Privari, to let them captain the boat themselves.
At dusk, fully fueled, supplied, and seventeen hours behind Tsumago, they sailed out of Asuncion’s harbor and turned northeast. The weather was hot and sunny, with a mild easterly breeze. Tanner breathed in the salt air and was suddenly glad to be at sea. The past few weeks had taken its toll, and he hadn’t noticed how tightly he was wound. It felt good to be in the middle of the wide-open nowhere.
Standing at the helm, he accepted a bottle of beer from Cahil.
“So what do we know about this rock?” Bear asked. “Are we talking Club Med or Guadalcanal?”
“You didn’t catch Mr. Privari’s lecture on Parece Kito’s delights?”
“Uh-uh. What’d he say?”
“In the water, razor sharp coral, sharks, and poisonous fish; ashore, dysentery, malaria, saber grass, vines as strong as steel cable, snakes, and giant lizards.”
Cahil froze with his beer bottle halfway to his mouth. “You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. And I quote: ‘Don’t drink the water, don’t eat anything that grows on the land, and don’t breathe the air too deeply.’”
“Takagi’s own little tropical getaway. Suits his personality.”
Tanner smiled. “How long till we get there?”
Cahil checked the chart, made some calculations. “At this speed, fifteen hours give or take.”
Cahil’s estimate was near-perfect. Early afternoon the following day, they spotted Parece Kito on the horizon, a hump of green rain forest surrounded by the churned white line of the reef. They circled to the opposite side of the island and followed the shore until the lagoon came into view.
“Big,” Cahil muttered, peering through the binoculars. “Great natural harbor.”
“Any sign of her?”
“Nope. Looks deserted. The beach is pristine. Doesn’t look like anybody’s walked on it since the war.”
Tanner took the binoculars and scanned the island. According to Oaken, the Japanese forces had razed most of the jungle in preparation for the invasion, but it had returned with a vengeance. So dense was the canopy that he found it hard to distinguish individual trees. It would be dark as night inside. If Takagi was hiding something, this was the right place.
“Hop on the prow, Bear.”
With Cahil leaning over the water and calling out hazards, Tanner steered through the outer reef, turned parallel to shore, and began circling the island. Soon the beach tapered to a ribbon about three feet wide. Trees dangled over the water and scraped the hull. After ten minutes, Cahil called out, “Port bow, Briggs. We’ve got ourselves a back door.”
Tanner saw it: a creek, about twenty-five feet wide, almost overgrown by jungle. It looked more like a tunnel than the mouth of a river. He throttled back and nosed the bow toward the opening. Cahil signaled a halt and lowered a sinker into the water. “Fifteen feet,” he whispered to Tanner. Something about a jungle, Briggs thought, that encouraged whispering. “Plenty of draft.”
Tanner eased them forward. Within seconds, the jungle swallowed them.
After half a mile, the creek widened into a small lagoon. Tanner cut the engines and let the boat glide on its own momentum. Cahil crawled back into the cabin and held a finger to his lips. He pointed through the windshield. What little sunlight found its way through the canopy was no brighter than moonlight, but the object of Bear’s attention was unmistakable: an L-shaped pier, made of rough planking and bamboo pilings. Not more than two years old, Tanner thought.
He realized his heart was pounding. “Grab the boat hook,” he whispered. “We’ll push our way in.”