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“Which one?” he asked.
“Island Dreams.”
“That’s, what, maybe six blocks away? There haven’t been any reports of trouble between here and there, but I would advise against it. Wait until later. You were lucky once. Don’t push it,” the officer said, his tone gruff.
Sam took her hand. “Come on. Let’s get it cleaned up enough so we can drive it.”
They walked to the Toyota and considered the windshield, which was opaque on one side from the rock. The passenger seat and dashboard had tiny glass shards on them, and Remi returned to the hospital to get a broom and a wet rag while Sam extracted the sat phone from his backpack and called Selma.
“Selma. What’s the word?” he asked when she answered.
“Your man Kumasaka was a colorful character. Graduated with a degree in microbiology and then went career military.”
“Really? That’s an unusual vocational path for a scientist.”
“Yes, well, there’s obviously more to that story. I had a hard time finding any coherent records for him, but when I did, the information in them is conflicting. Some records put him as part of the infantry, others have him as a communications specialist, still others have him as part of the emperor’s trusted inner circle of military advisers.”
“Strange.”
“Perhaps the oddest part is that the Allies had him listed as part of the Meiji Corps.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Nobody has. I couldn’t find any information about it.”
Sam paused. “That doesn’t sound like the Selma I know and love.”
He could almost hear her grinning over the phone. “So of course I dug deeper. Tunneled. Pulled out all the stops, including contacting my shadowy government sources.”
“The suspense is killing me.”
“The Meiji Corps, as near as I can figure out, was a special projects group that was responsible for nontraditional warfare. It took its name from one of the most famous emperors in the last two hundred years.”
“Nontraditional warfare,” Sam repeated. “What would that consist of in 1942? Nukes hadn’t been invented yet.”
“Correct. I’m filling in blanks here and speculating, but that leaves espionage, and . . . biological warfare.”
The silence on the line hung heavy, a faint background hiss like the sound of the sea’s receding tide pulling sand from the beach.
“Which would explain the rumors of experiments. Bioweapon development . . .” Sam said, his voice low.
“I didn’t tell you the most troubling thing I discovered, though,” Selma said.
“Which is?”
“Even now, seventy-something years later? All DOD and intelligence files on the Meiji Corps and on Colonel Kumasaka are still classified. Top secret. So there’s no hard information to corroborate my hunches. My main contact at Defense called back and said he couldn’t help me. This is a guy who’s always been nothing but friendly. When I first called him, he was his usual self, but in our last discussion his voice could have frozen fire.”
Sam eyed Remi and then the hospital behind her.
“Top secret even now? I wonder why? What could still be classified from that long ago?” he said.
“I don’t know, but I have a feeling that your colonel was anything but an ordinary soldier.” Selma answered.
Sam nodded to himself as he pulled the driver’s-side door open. “Sending a destroyer to take him straight to Tokyo would seem to confirm that.” He paused, eyeing the street for any signs of trouble. Nothing. The mob had vanished like the morning mist that hung over the harbor. “Selma, I know I don’t have to belabor this but you absolutely have to get me everything you can about this man.”
“Peter and Wendy are working on it, as am I. I’ll have more for you shortly and will send it to your e-mail.” She hesitated. “Am I reading this correctly? I just saw a headline flash on my screen that there’s been an assassination and rioting on Guadalcanal?”
“Yes. But, thankfully, we’re fine.”