Tailed by the scombroid Bedlow and having left Kuan to his own devices for the evening, Morrison entered the canteen on Liu Kung Island, where he found James drinking what looked like flavoured milk.
‘Local specialty. Not sure why I didn’t discover it earlier. Ichiban. Jap for “number one”. Egg, milk, brandy, gin, crème de Macao, Angostura bitters, all the usual devices of the devil. Midshipmen write home to their mothers about it but only mention the first two ingredients. Does wonders to keep out the cold. G.E.—there’s been an incident.’
James had been on deck on the Haimun. It was a cold night. He looked up the coast towards Port Arthur, then across to Dalny. Twenty-five miles of darkness. Not even a passing convoy. He was about to go below deck when a steamer flying the flag of a Russian admiral suddenly appeared at stern, all four funnels belching smoke. ‘Damned fast boat, that one,’ he told Morrison.
He raced into the saloon. Brown, the Haimun’s wireless operator, was deep in a novel by Jack London; he might as well have been in Alaska. ‘Brown!’ James yelled and Brown jumped. ‘Spark up the wireless! We’re about to be boarded by the Russians! Tell Fraser that if they don’t hear from us within three hours he should inform the British commissioner, the senior naval officer and The Times.’ James then raced up to the bridge.
Captain Passmore was glued to a pair of binoculars. By now the Russians were running parallel. ‘Bloody hell, James.’ Passmore spoke without removing his eyes from the glass. ‘That’s the Bayan.’
At this revelation, Morrison sat bolt upright. ‘Makarov’s flagship?’
‘Yes, the flagship of the Commander of the Russian Pacific Fleet himself,’ James confirmed.
Morrison could have sworn Bedlow’s ears actually angled forward at this.
‘Brown sent the message. At that moment, the Bayan, which had passed the Haimun, suddenly changed course. Just then a great booming flash of yellow fire screamed across the Haimun’s bow.’
Bedlow’s eyes popped.
‘Ye gods,’ exclaimed Morrison.
James continued. ‘Brown, white as a sheet, raced back into the cabin as Passmore shouted the orders to weigh anchor. I whipped around, looking for Tonami.’
‘Your Japanese translator.’
James grimaced and took a swig of ichiban before continuing. ‘The quartermaster said Tonami had made a dash for his cabin. I pushed open the door. His shirt was off and he was pointing a dagger at his own stomach.’
A shiver went through Morrison. ‘Let me get this right. Your interpreter was going to commit hara-kiri.’
‘Seppuku. I mean, that’s what they call it.’
There was more to this story, that was for certain. Morrison was beginning to get an inkling of what it was. ‘Go on, man.’
‘I shouted at him to stop. He told me he knew what he had to do and thrust a sheaf of papers at me.’
‘Papers? What papers?’ Bedlow could scarcely contain himself. His eyes gleamed with interest, his moustache with milk. Morrison felt his hackles rise. There was enough to be concerned about here without worrying about the human wireless sparking up next to him. He glanced around the room. His eyes lit on the eccentric Reginald Johnston, a genial thirty-year-old Scot who served as Wei Hai Wei’s chief magistrate. Johnston, Morrison knew, travelled with an entourage of imaginary friends who had been with him since boyhood. Johnston could keep a man entertained—or trapped—for hours with his stories of The Quork, with her bonnet box and scandalous behaviour; the libidinous Mrs Walkinshaw, who could ‘shock a geisha’; and the strange malefic beast Hopedarg.
‘Bedlow.’ Morrison’s fingers closed around Bedlow’s wrist like a manacle. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’
Returning alone to James, Morrison scowled. ‘Indiscreet little jackanapes. He’s been a barnacle to my hull ever since I met him. Nearly impossible to scrape off. Now tell me all about Tonami and tell me fast. He’s no civilian translator, that’s for sure. Officer in the Japanese navy, I take it. Rank?’
James attempted a smile. ‘Commander.’
‘The papers?’
‘His ciphers. He said if he died I should destroy them.’
‘When were you going to tell me?’
‘I am sorry, G.E. It was part of the deal.’
‘To keep quiet. The Japs swore me to secrecy.’
Morrison raised one pale eyebrow. ‘I take it our employer is as in the dark about this deal as I am.’
James nodded. He confessed that the Japanese navy had finally agreed to give him limited access to the theatre of war on one condition: that he carried on board a Japanese naval officer pretending to be a civilian translator. Tonami would act as an official censor. His job was to ensure that James’s reports contained nothing detrimental to the Japanese cause. It was true he also translated but that was rather a bonus.
Morrison digested what James was telling him. ‘An arrangement that compromises the neutrality of the ship, and, by extension, Great Britain as well. Not to mention the operation and good name of The Times. And yet the Japanese have done next to nothing to fulfil their part of the bargain, which is to grant you protected access to the front.’
Digging in his tobacco pouch, James focused on refilling his pipe. ‘If you put it that way, yes.’
Morrison put one hand on his forehead as though to shield himself from further revelations. ‘So go on. Tonami, the Japanese naval commander posing as a civilian translator, was about to commit hari-kiri aboard a putatively neutral vessel leased by The Times.’
‘Seppuku. I said we could disguise him. They’d never guess who he was. Alive, anyway. I’d have had a bloody hard time explaining the presence of a freshly disembowelled Japanese translator to the Russian search party. But Tonami shook his head. “They’ll know. The Admiral, Stephan Makarov, and I were in Paris together. Il est genial. Intelligent, aussi. Tout le monde le trouve ça.” There was more. Something about a French girl. Makarov had never forgiven him. Marvellous, I thought. Bloody marvellous. I forbade him to do anything foolish and dashed off, returning moments later with the uniform of the Malay quartermaster. By the time Russian boots were clomping across the gangway, Tonami was at the ship’s wheel, the brim of the quartermaster’s cap low over his eyes.’
James had extended a hand to the leader of the boarding party and introduced himself in English and French, doing his best to look calm.
The Russians exchanged glances. Also speaking in French, they asked if there were any Japanese on board.
James shook his head. ‘Mais non, bien sûr.’
The Russians demanded to be taken to the wireless and shown what had been transmitted. James handed over a ream of fake, innocuous telegrams they’d prepared for just such an emergency. Checking these against the equipment, the Russians noted that the latest transmission was missing. James found it and showed them: it was the notice to Wei Hai Wei that they were about to be boarded. The Russians took in the fact that since the Haimun seemed to be a neutral ship engaged in nothing that would compromise its neutrality, holding it beyond three hours might precipitate an international incident. Seeing his chance, James chose that moment to tell them he had earlier seen four Japanese cruisers steaming towards Port Arthur. He intimated that it would be a shame, a tragedy even, if ships of the Russian navy—including the Admiral’s own flagship—were cut off from the home port due to their dealings with such an irrelevant person as himself. The Russians raced up onto the deck, thundered down the gangplank and were gone.
James exhaled. ‘We returned here straight away and I cabled you to come. I wanted to inform you in case there were any repercussions. I knew I could count on your support. I am not so sure our editor will be as sympathetic.’
Morrison swirled his drink in his glass. ‘Just out of curiosity, what was in the real record of transmissions that the Russians could have objected to? Were they not just submissions to The Times and so on?’
‘They don’t call you the great correspondent for nothing, G.E.’ James took a few quick puffs on his pipe. He lowered his voice until it was barely audible. ‘Tonami uses our wireless equipment to transmit intelligence and orders to the Japanese navy.’
‘Ye gods, man! Are you reporting a war or trying to start one?’ Morrison was about to ask James when he’d planned on telling him the truth when he realised that James had been hinting at it from that time they’d met in Peking. What’s more, James had asked him to travel to Nagasaki with him and Tonami on the Haimun. He’d clearly wanted to tell him then. Morrison was certain that if only he’d gone, he’d have been able to work out some strategy to prevent the disaster that was now threatened by the Russians. But no, he’d gone to Shanghai in pursuit of the cackle-headed Miss Perkins instead. From the evidence, it is I who is the cackle-headed one! Well, that strange episode in his life was over. And thank goodness for that. His work needed him and he needed it.