The Phoenix Tree

JON CLEARY

The Phoenix Tree

Dedication

To Judith and Arthur Morris

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Keep Reading

About the Author

Author's Note

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

1

Kenji Minato’s escape from the San Diego naval base did not go according to plan.

‘We shall have to arrange your escape,’ Commander Embury had said. ‘It has to look genuine. You’ve got to land back in Japan without any chance of them thinking you’ve been planted. You make for the Mexican border and get out of the States, that’s your first priority. As you know, there’s no Japanese embassy in Mexico City – the Mexicans are theoretically at war with the Japanese.’

‘The best way to be at war,’ Tom Okada had said. Though he was the American he had been far less cooperative than Minato. But then, Minato remembered, Tom had always been a rebel, even at high school.

‘That’s enough, corporal,’ Embury had said, not even glancing at Okada. I’m the important one here, Minato had thought, the real hero; and Tom doesn’t like it. ‘Lieutenant, there are Japanese and German businessmen down in Mexico who haven’t been interned. We know they are part of the Japanese spy network – I’m sure you have contacts there.’

Minato nodded. ‘And I’m sure you know who they are, Commander.’

Embury nodded in return. ‘We do, but they don’t worry us. You will have to persuade them to move you along their line back to Japan. It’ll probably be down to an embassy in South America, one of the smaller countries. From there it will probably be by ship to Lisbon; then by plane the rest of the way, through Occupied Europe to Turkey. We’re not sure what route the Japanese or Germans use from there on, but they do move personnel between themselves. It’s a long way home, but there’s no other way – it has to look as if you made it without any help from us. We’ll allow six to eight weeks, but that will depend on how quickly you’re moved along the line. We’ll give you names of contacts in Mexico City and other possible stopovers, so that you can keep us informed of when you’re being moved on. As for you, Corporal Okada—’

Okada sat up.

‘You’ll be going in by a much more direct route. We’ll drop you by parachute. Or take you in by submarine. You have nothing to worry about.’

Okada, for the moment, had chosen to be more Japanese than American. He had looked inscrutable.

On 3 January, the night of the escape, all went well to begin with. At 10 p.m. Minato complained to the Shore Patrol guard on duty that he had a slight attack of diarrhoea and had to go to the head. In all the weeks he had been here at the Navy base he had given no trouble; he and his guards were on the friendliest of terms, though the guard detail still had no idea why he had been held here so long. The SP on duty that night had no reason to believe that this trip to the head was any different from all the other trips Minato had made. Nothing establishes a routine as much as certain natural functions.

The guard suspected nothing when Minato stopped to tie up a shoelace. He was all innocent curiosity when Minato said, ‘What’s going on over there?’ He turned his head and was facing away from Minato when the latter hit him with a karate chop across the side of the neck. He went down in slow motion, allowing the Japanese to catch him and lower him into the shadows beside the latrine block. Minato took the guard’s pistol and the scout’s knife that was clipped to the man’s belt; the knife was not general issue but had been a proud possession of Alvin Gellen, ex-Eagle Scout. Minato waited till he was certain he had not been observed by anyone still moving about on the base. Then, keeping to the shadows, he made his way to where he had been told the admiral’s car would be parked.

He found the car, got into the boot and closed the lid, though making sure it could not be locked. Twenty minutes later the car was driven out of the base. The admiral, whose wife was keeping the home fires burning in Norfolk, Virginia, spent several nights a week being warmed by the wife of a commander absent on duty in the Pacific; keeping their adultery in the service, neither the admiral nor the commander’s wife thought they were being too traitorous. The driver delivered the admiral to his rendezvous, then drove on to his own assignation with the wife of a yeoman first class who was also absent on duty in the Pacific. The celibate Minato removed himself from the boot after the driver had hurried off whistling ‘Pistol Packin’ Momma’, a lover’s serenade.

Minato had half an hour’s walk through the darkened streets before he came to the alley off Market Street where he had been told the getaway car would be parked. He did not know San Diego well; he had not been in the city since before Pearl Harbor; so he had asked for the car to be parked where it could easily be found. Several times during the walk he had to slip into doorways to avoid being recognized as a Japanese. He sardonically wondered if the spies in Europe, from either side, appreciated the camouflage of looking no different from the enemy.

The car was a black 1938 Pontiac with California plates; the keys were taped under the front right-hand wing. He was just opening the driver’s door when the escape plan went wrong. Embury and his fellow planners had, quite reasonably, not taken into account the perambulations of a half-drunken, off-duty SP mate third-class.

Clem Bateman was from a farm in Missouri, prone to seasickness and therefore confined to shore duty; but he was big and strong and he could wield a billy-stick with all the woundup efficiency of a corn thresher; he had broken more American heads than any Kraut or Jap ever had. He hated Japs, particularly because it seemed that he would never get the chance to fight any and he would go back home at the end of the war and have nothing to boast about to the folks in Pike’s Corner. But if Japs had to go on living, then he reckoned the guy he had been guarding for weeks, l’il ole Kenny Minato, was as good as any to be given the chance. He had come to think that l’il ole Kenny was a real nice guy.

He was taking a short cut through the alley, heading for a cathouse he had run aground on while on SP patrol, when he came on the Jap trying to open a car door. He was almost past him before he recognized that he was a Jap; he had taken two more stumbling paces before he recognized Minato. He turned round, fell against the car in his surprise.

‘Hey, Minato! What the hell you doing here?’

‘Nothing. I got a pass—’

‘The hell you did!’ He made a grab at Minato. ‘Lemme buy you a drink! When’d you last have a good drink, eh?’

Minato did not want to kill the big American, but he had always been swift in deciding his options. He flicked open the scout’s knife and stabbed Mate Third Class Bateman with it. He had a rudimentary knowledge of anatomy, but he knew that Americans were always boasting they were all heart and he took them at their word and stabbed in the general direction. Bateman died instantly, the best way to go, and had no time to be disappointed in the real nice guy.

The big farmer’s boy slid down on to the front fender, lay there for a moment as if deciding whether he should go further, then slumped to the ground. Minato looked down at him dispassionately. The war was three years old and up till now he had killed no one; he was surprised at how little he was affected by the American’s death. He had never expected to have to kill and now he had done it without compunction, as if it were part of his nature. There is a certain satisfaction in self-discovery, especially if you feel in command of what one has learned. Minato had no ambition to go on killing, but he knew that if he had to do it again he would kill without qualms.

He stepped over the body into the car, started up the engine and drove down the alley and into Market Street. He drove east out through Encanto and soon was in the desert, keeping his speed steady so that he would not attract the attention of a cruising police car. There was more traffic on Route 8 than he had expected at this time of night; then he realized it was mostly military traffic. But he took no notice of it; he was finished with spying here in the United States.

It came as something of a shock that he was finished in the United States, period. He had been here six years, at liberty more than half that time, and there had been times when he had felt himself becoming Americanized, a disease he had tried to avoid. But he knew how infectious America was; one could come to believe that all its propaganda was the reality. There was no discipline to the country, of course, but even that had begun to have its appeal; its vaunted democracy was riddled with holes, a political Swiss cheese, but it meant that anyone could rise to the top, something that was not possible in the Japan he had left six years ago. America had much to offer; it was a pity it could not be conquered.

Well out in the desert he at last turned south after checking the map that had been left for him in the glove box. He drove the Pontiac along a dirt road that wound between bare hillocks that looked like white buttocks in the bright moonlight. He had switched off the headlights and drove carefully along the twisting track. He stopped for a moment, switched on the car’s interior light and looked again at the map; then he drove on, certain that he was on the right route to the weakest spot in the long surveillance by the Border Patrol. He drove for another ten minutes, then switched off the engine and let the car roll to a halt. He sat listening for a full minute; then he got quietly out of the car and listened again. He could hear a night bird of some sort; it had an unmusical cry, like a short cough of despair. He remembered from his time in the camp in Arizona how sound carried in the desert at night; the highway had to be at least five or six miles north of him, yet he could still hear the moan of trucks as they changed gears to climb a rise. But he heard no sound of motors close to him. Unless the Border Patrol was lying somewhere amongst the greasewood and cactus, he was safe.

He went to the boot of the car and took out the cheap suitcase he knew would be mere; he had come to have a great deal of faith in Commander Embury. The suitcase contained a blue work-shirt, a pair of coveralls, work-boots and a woollen lumber jacket, all of them faded and worn; just the sort of outfit a farm worker would wear. He changed out of the Navy tans, then looked at what remained in the suitcase. Five hundred dollars in US bills and Mexican pesos, more than enough to get him to Mexico City and the contact there. He had always thought that Americans were far too generous with the taxpayers’ money.

He headed south, leaving the track, which now swung east, and trudged along a dry watercourse. Occasionally he pulled up sharply as yucca trees or, once, a small Joshua tree took on the shape of a man in the moonlight; but no harsh voice hailed him, no light was flashed on him, and after a moment he would move on. Low cactus caught at his trouser-legs and once he jumped in the air as a jack-rabbit suddenly erupted almost beneath him. The watercourse began to drop, then he heard the trickle of water and soon he was walking through tule weeds besides a thin creek that reflected the moonlight like shards of polished shale.

Then the creek ran out, seeming to disappear into the ground. He came to a deep arroyo, slid down its bank and fell over the sleeping figure at the bottom.

He rolled aside, dropping his suitcase and grabbing at his pocket for the scout’s knife. But there was no call to use it. The man he had fallen over sat up, grumbling at being disturbed; even in the moonlight it was possible to see, or anyway smell, that he was drunk, or had been. Two bottles lay near him on the pale sand and he smelled as if he had just climbed out of a wine vat. He was no danger to anyone but himself.

Minato stood up, then dropped down again with a sharp cry. His ankle felt as if it had been hit with an axe. Gingerly he moved his foot, wincing against the pain; he decided the ankle wasn’t broken but sprained enough to make him a half-cripple. He looked at the man and wanted to kill him.

‘Howdy,’ said the man, and hiccupped. ‘Who’re you?’

‘What the hell are you doing out here, you bum?’ Minato tried to sound as American as he could.

‘I live here. You new around here?’ The man leaned forward, putting his breath on Minato like a dirty hand. ‘Goddam, a fucking Jap!’

Minato was ready to kill him if he raised some sort of alarm, but the man just shook his head, almost dislodging the tall-crowned black hat he wore. Then Minato said, ‘I’m Nisei, not Japanese. A Jap American, if you like.’

The man giggled, took off his hat and revealed the thick dark plaits hanging down by his ears. ‘Only one sort Americans, buddy. Us. You ask General fucking Custer.’

Minato stared at the Indian, then looked around him, half-expecting to be surrounded. The man hiccupped and reached for one of the bottles. But it was empty, as was the second bottle; he threw them away with a curse. He sat in the sand of the arroyo bed, his shoulders slumped, looking ready to weep. But he and his sort had given up weeping years before: the struggle was long lost.

At last he looked up. ‘You didn’t oughta be here. White guys ain’t allowed on the reservation. Yeller guys, neither. We’re the last of the Apaches, western division.’ He giggled again. ‘The gov’ment tried to educate me once. They wanted an Apache bur’crat.’

‘Reservation?’ Embury hadn’t mentioned any Indian reservation. Then Minato realized he must have taken the wrong turning off Route 8; he still had to go three-quarters of the way round the world and already he was lost. He cursed himself in Japanese, then reverted to English. ‘A bureaucrat? You help run the reservation?’

The Indian laughed, more than just a giggle this time; as if with no drink left, he had decided to sober up. ‘I lasted a week. They said I liked the fire-water too much. They was right, I do like it. Tequila, wine, whiskey, makes no difference. Where you heading?’ he said abruptly, sounding very sober.

‘Across the border.’ Minato had begun to recognize a fellow enemy of the American government.

‘What for?’

‘I’m tired of being pushed around. You look different in this country, they want to knock the shit out of you.’ He was trying to sound like some of the Nisei, the Japanese-American farm workers he had known in the camps.

‘Didn’t they intern all you guys?’ The Indian was sounding more sober by the minute; and more intelligent.

‘I spent two years in a camp over in Arizona. Then they let me out, guess they thought I could be trusted. I been working on a farm up in Utah.’

‘Where you going when you get across the border?’

‘I dunno. South America, maybe. They’re not so fussy down there – what you look like, I mean.’ It offended him to be talking like this, to have to act out this charade.

‘Yeah.’ The Indian nodded sympathetically. He was dressed in a dark shirt and coveralls and had an Indian blanket wrapped round his shoulders; but for the blanket and his plaits, he could have passed almost unnoticed in any American street crowd. But he was on the inside looking out of himself, the recognition of difference was in his own eyes. Then abruptly he sat up straight. ‘Truck’s coming!’

For a moment Minato heard nothing; then he caught the sound of a motor somewhere to the east. ‘What is it?’

‘The Patrol. They come along here every night. Dunno what they’re looking for. Japs or Indians going out or Mex’s coming in.’ He laughed softly; he was no longer giggling. ‘I’ll take you to the border. How much?’

‘Five dollars?’

‘Five bucks? You a fucking Jewish Jap?’ He had his prejudices; he didn’t lump all white Americans together. ‘Ten.’

‘Okay, ten.’ Minato stood up, listening to the truck getting closer. He put his injured foot to the ground and gasped with pain. ‘You’ll have to help me.’

‘Another five bucks.’ The Indian grinned in the moonlight. ‘We give up taking beads. It’s a cash economy.’

He offered his arm to Minato and the latter leaned on it. They set off along the arroyo, Minato hobbling painfully, the Indian slouching along; arm in arm they looked like old friends, or lovers, who had lost their way after a night out. To the east of them they could hear the grinding of the truck in low gear, as if it was ploughing its way towards them from the far end of the arroyo.

The Indian abruptly turned right, throwing Minato off-balance; the Japanese cried out with pain and the Indian gruffly muttered an apology. Minato clung to him as they stumbled up the bank of the arroyo. Like all Japanese he had always been meticulous in his bodily cleanliness and he was sickened by the smell of the Indian; but he had no other staff to lean on. They struggled up to the top of the bank and the Indian paused.

‘There they are.’ He spoke casually, as if he had been scouting for the enemy for over a century. Carleton, Sibley, Custer, the forces of the white man’s law and order, were marked on the horizons of his mind.

Minato saw the slowly bouncing beam of the headlights some distance away: maybe five hundred yards, maybe more. He was short-sighted, a handicap for a spy, and at night he had no idea of distance. He just knew that the Border Patrol truck, probably a pick-up, was too close for comfort.

‘Lay down,’ said the Indian. ‘You ain’t gonna be able to run with that ankle.’

He pushed Minato to the ground, then walked off without another word, straight towards the approaching truck. Minato lay flat to the ground and watched the Indian through a spiky hedge of low cactus. The Indian stopped about fifty yards away and stood waiting on the top of the bank. The truck continued to approach, its headlights beam moving from side to side like a blind giant’s white stick as it twisted its way along the arroyo. Then it pulled up immediately beneath the Indian.

The engine was switched off and a voice said, ‘That you, Jerry? You out here again, drunk again?’

The Indian was silhouetted against the glare of the headlights beneath him; in his tall hat and with his blanket wrapped round him he all at once had a dignity about him, a dark monument. ‘Just clearing my head, Mr Porter. I been celebrating Geronimo’s birthday.’

Minato could imagine the Indian chuckling to himself. But he lay waiting for the Indian to give him away: in a cash economy, the reward for capturing an escaped Japanese prisoner must be more than five or ten dollars. Then Minato remembered he was supposed to be a Nisei; maybe the Indian knew that a Nisei was worth nothing.

The man down in the arroyo laughed without humour. ‘You seen anyone around here while you been clearing your head?’

‘Ain’t no one here but us Indians, Mr Porter.’ Again Minato could imagine the quiet chuckle. He began to feel easier, safe.

The Border Patrol man said something that Minato didn’t catch; then the engine was started up again and the truck drove slowly on along the arroyo. The Indian watched it go, raising his hand in a mock salute of peace. Then he came unhurriedly back to Minato as the latter got awkwardly to his feet.

‘You gonna be okay now. We got about a mile to go.’

Minato looked steadily at him. ‘Why is a guy like you still here on the reservation? There are plenty of Indians like you in the army.’

‘The army don’t want no drunk. Anyhow, they know I’m still fighting with the Chiricahuas. They think I’m crazy, a crazy drunk.’ He laughed, not crazily but intelligently. ‘What army wants a crazy drunken brave?’

Minato didn’t know who the Chiricahuas were but he guessed they were warriors of long ago: maybe Indian samurai? He took the other man’s arm again and they moved on. It was another half-hour, with Minato hobbling painfully, now clinging to the stinking Indian as if he loved him, before the Indian abruptly said, ‘Okay, this is it. You’re in Mexico.’

Minato sank down in the dust and looked up at him. ‘Don’t joke, I’m not in the mood for it.’ He had forgotten that he was supposed to be a farm worker; the rough accent was gone. ‘We should have come through a wire fence or something.’

‘There’s no fence, not around here, anyway. We’ve just crossed into Mexico, you take my word for it. Fifteen bucks.’ He held out his hand.

Minato felt in the suitcase, took out the roll of notes and peeled off three fives. ‘You’re not going to leave me ’way out here? I’ll give you another five to take me to the nearest road.’

The Indian put the bills in his pocket. ‘This is as far as I go. You wanna be careful with that money. I could of took it off of you. You know what they used to say – never trust an Injun.’

‘I’d kill you if you tried.’ Minato stood up, awkwardly but quickly. The scout’s knife was open in his hand, its blade a pale glint in the moonlight.

The Indian didn’t back off. His right hand came out from under his blanket; it held a knife, one with a longer blade than Minato’s. ‘Don’t try it, Jap. How many guys you killed with that potato-peeler?’

One: but what was that to boast about? Minato picked up his suitcase and backed away, on edge for the first hint that the Indian was about to plunge towards him. But the Indian didn’t move; instead, he grinned and put his knife back under his blanket. He looked steadily at Minato, then he turned on his heel and walked slowly back into the moon-softened darkness, like a ghost retreating into the past.

Then his voice came floating back, as clear on the desert silence as if he were only a few yards away: ‘You can’t win, Jap. You’re like us – the war’s lost!’

Minato sat down suddenly in the dust; it was his spirit, not his ankle, that buckled. For six months, ever since he’d been picked up, he’d fooled the Americans. Slowly he had let them think they had turned him round, converted him into a double-agent, a traitor to Japan. It had not been easy to fool them; the Americans had a pathological suspicion of all Japanese, even the US-born ones like Tom Okada. But subtly, he thought, he had hinted at his six years’ conversion to American thinking and institutions; but all the while he had remained as Japanese as ever. He was intelligent and objective enough to know that Japan was losing the war; but he wanted to go home to die in Japan, not live on, or at worst die, in America. And now it seemed that the long wait might end here in the Mexican desert.

He had twenty thousand miles to go, more than halfway round the world, and suddenly he wondered if it would all be worthwhile. Abruptly he began to giggle, almost drunkenly, sounding just like the Indian had when he had first stumbled on him. He was thinking of Tom Okada, the American, waiting for him in Japan and his own bleached bones lying here in the mean shade of a Joshua tree.

The joke was that Okada’s code name was Joshua.

2

On St Valentine’s Day Tom Okada hung in midair at midnight above the middle of Honshu. He had never felt so utterly alone; it was as if the whole universe were a vacuum and he, alive only on the air still in his lungs, were the only living thing in it. Already the sound of the aircraft that had dropped him had faded and above him the stars were dead white eyes that offered him no sympathy. Below him Japan was just a black hole hidden by cloud cover.