CHAPTER SEVENTY

Super Seiner Factory Ship Port of Embden 220, in the South China Sea near the Spratley Islands, Six bells on the middle watch, October 18, 1963

Antoine said sharply, “If you do, they will arrest you; and all our efforts to escape to a new life will be lost.”

“Help me like you always have, Antoine, and we can get our revenge with no one being the wiser. I have asked but very little during the long years we have suffered together. This I ask.”

Antoine hated the dimunitive Japanese martinet as much as Hugues did. He paused in thought for a moment.

“All right. But we will plan this carefully. No one can even guess about you and me being involved. He must disappear. Be patient.”

“I will try my best, Mon Frère; but I cannot endure forever.”

Antoine nodded. He knew where the surimi master’s stateroom was located. After dark that same night, he, Hugues, and Serge reconnoitered the passageway containing the stateroom and the possible places where the man’s body could be hidden or dumped overboard without them being detected.

Serge located a cold storage room where the off-line fish were held frozen for transportation to an onshore fertilizer plant. There were huge vats of frozen fish of all kinds except salmon which were waiting to be ground up unceremoniously as soon as the ship docked.

Each of the men carried a fish-killing club. Serge tapped on Master Shimazaki’s stateroom door while the other two stood well off to the side. It was very late, nearing three bells of the middle watch [one-thirty].

The master opened the door and peered groggily out into the companion way trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

He managed to start a sentence with, “What’s the…,” but those were his last words.

Serge brought his fish club up from where it was hanging at his side and struck the small Japanese in the middle of his skull. Shimazaki dropped like a sack of fish salt, and his eyes turned blank. The three attackers pushed him into his room and were about to take out all of their frustrations when Antoine had a moment of clarity.

“Stop!” he hissed. “No blood. Break his neck.”

“My turn,” Hugues said.

He knelt down and applied the thumbs of his powerful hands and crushed the man’s neck’s hyoid bones and thyroid cartilages. It was unnecessary. The surimi master was already dead.

Hugues fought to control his bloodlust, knowing that Antoine was right, as always.

“You are the Burakumin and Gaijin, you little sonderbar [queer].”

He spat on him, then moved back to get better control of himself.

“Serge, check the companionway. Hugues and I will wrap him up in his extra bedsheets and blankets; so, no one will be able to be sure what we’re carrying if they should happen out into the companionway while we’re carting him to the off-line fish storage.”

No one was out and about. It was an uncomfortable night, and the ship was experiencing some of every motion the ocean could dish out: pitching, yawing, swaying, sinking, surging, and heaving. The three Gebirgsjägers were hampered in their movements to avoid banging into the bulkheads or falling. They shuffled along with very wide-based stances until they made their way into the ice-cold fish storage area. Antoine closed and locked the hatch while Serge and Hugues removed a center portion of frozen fish from one large container to make room for the sirimi master’s corpse. Their hands were nearly frozen by the time they muckled the body—which now seemed very heavy—into the pit in the center of the great mound of frozen fish. Then they all pitched in to shovel the fish over Shimazaki until his body was covered about two feet deep. They forced the lid down as tightly as they possibly could; and Serge found the metal seal placer and clamped it on the hinge, signifying that this batch was ready for transport off the ship and into Hong Kong lorries bound for the interior of the People’s Republic of China.

Master Shimazaki was not missed for three days, and then his absence became a mystery. No one held out much hope that the man or his body would be found in the vastness of the South China Sea—which extends over an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan, a water territory over a million and a quarter square miles. The ship’s security force combed the ship from top to bottom and interrogated every man aboard who had had anything to do with the man. It was all to no avail. No one saw anything. No one knew anything. No one could even imagine anyone having ill feelings towards him such that they would commit murder and throw the man’s body overboard. Mostly no one talked; they just kept their eyes down and mumbled monosyllabic non-answers when questioned and went about their routines as if nothing had happened. To the vast majority of the men, nothing had happened. Nobody cared.