CHAPTER 24

“The characters are Japanese, and they mean ‘the children of Shiro.’ Add that information to the biological attacks, and I’m sure you grasp the magnitude of our problem.”

Eytan took a moment to digest the news. He ran his hand over his head and looked at the ceiling.

“Hell… Shiro Ishii.”

“Yes,” Cypher said.

“Do you mind filling me in?” Elena asked, taking a bottle of water out of the minibar. She held out another bottle to Eytan, but he declined.

“Mr. Morg will explain everything, my dear. As for me, I must be off. Call me back as soon as you have anything on the lab materials.”

Cypher ended the call without any formalities. Eytan made his way to the window overlooking the Vltava River. Elena followed, leaned her shoulder against the wall, and waited for his explanation.

“There was this one German concentration camp doctor I arrested,” Eytan said in a monotone. “I offered him a quick bullet to the brain, but he chose to go to trial. During his interrogation, he pretty much shrugged off the horrors he and his buddies committed. His words stuck in my head. ‘Compared to the Japanese, we were choirboys.’”

“I don’t know very much about the Pacific War,” Elena said.

Eytan sighed.

“From 1931 until the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945, the Japanese had research centers in the occupied Chinese region. The most horrific and well known of them was Unit 731. Its official name was the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department. A nice little euphemism to cover up the facility’s true purpose. Under the command of Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii, Unit 731 developed an advanced biological and chemical warfare program that included experimentation on human subjects. The Kempeitai, the Imperial Army’s military police, a sort of Gestapo, provided some six hundred human guinea pigs every year the unit was in existence. Many more human subjects came from other experimentation sites. Nearly three-quarters of them were Chinese. But the rest were Russians, Pacific islanders, and Southeast Asians. It’s believed there were even some Allied prisoners of war. Once medical ethics were thrown out the window, it was anything goes. You needed a heart of steel to hear the horrors committed: vivisections, amputations, the infliction of all possible and imaginable diseases on women and children.”

“That’s insane,” Elena replied, genuinely disgusted.

“They were also frozen, gassed, and hanged upside down to see how long it would take to choke to death. Even if a subject survived an experiment, he was immediately forced to endure another one. And it went on and on until he was eventually killed. Victims were jokingly referred to as ‘logs,’ meaning lumber, and the center was called the ‘sawmill.’ Basically, all you have to do is imagine the worst abominations in the world under the most nightmarish circumstances, and you should get the picture.”

Eytan stopped. He listened to the muffled street noise below and the gentle tapping of rain against the window.

“That’s awful,” Elena said after a few minutes of silence. She took a sip of her water. “But what’s the connection between the horrors committed in the Pacific during World War II and the attacks in Czechoslovakia and Moscow?”

“I’ll get there. Let me finish first. After studying medicine, Ishii served in the army as a high-ranking surgeon. During a two-year trip through Europe, he researched chemical weapons used during World War I. This was a huge eye-opener for him. He came to the conclusion that victory over the USSR and the United States could be achieved through chemical and bacteriological warfare.”

“There were no such attacks during World War II, to my knowledge.”

“That’s partially true. At one point, the Japanese did launch thousands of incendiary balloons over the Pacific. Only a few managed to land on the West Coast. Six people died, but those balloons could have done much more harm if the plan had succeeded. The Japanese then loaded a submarine with biological weapons, but it sank before the weapons could be used. Undaunted, they devised Operation Cherry Blossom, which would have involved filling planes with fleas infected with the plague. Kamikazes were supposed to crash their planes near San Diego. That plan was thwarted when a message was sent by the US government to Japan. I’m paraphrasing, but basically it said, ‘We know where the emperor is hiding. Send your bombs, and we’ll turn him into birdfeed.’”

“They were telling the Japanese government that they’d drop an atom bomb on the emperor?”

“Yep, the Americans originally planned to hit Berlin, but the Third Reich collapsed before the bomb was ready. Unfortunately, the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t as lucky.”

Eytan turned his back to the window.

“Anyway, between the Japanese writing on the wall and the nature of the attacks here and in Russia, I’m worried there’s a Unit 731 copycat.”

“Do you think the two events are connected?”

“Your boss, Cypher, seems to think so. Two attacks in the same week. That can’t be a coincidence. The real problem will be identifying our terrorists and understanding their motives so we can keep them from striking again. I’m anxious to receive more information from your network.”

“That shouldn’t take long. Do you have any theories?”

“Too many. It’s hard to isolate the most credible one.”

“So what happened to Ishii at the end of the war?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re shitting me, right?” exclaimed Elena.

“I wish. The man gave up all the details of his operation in exchange for immunity. He died of lung cancer in 1959, a free man. He was sixty-seven. Quite a lifespan when you consider that some of his victims didn’t make it to their first birthday.”

“I’d like to know how the guy managed an exchange like that. Why didn’t you target him? I bet you would have loved that.”

“I was focused on the part of history that affected me personally. And that kept me busy enough,” Eytan said. “And besides, if I had decided to seek justice for what Ishii and his cohorts did, I would have faced a major obstacle.”

“It must have been a big one.”

“The Americans protected Ishii and his team so they could get hold of his work. His experiments were a gold mine for the United States. The wholesale disregard for ethics made it possible for Unit 731 to make major discoveries. For example, they sent naked subjects outside in below-freezing temperatures. It would sicken most people to know that those studies yielded critical advancements in the treatment of frostbite, treatments that are considered standard procedure today. So there was no way the United States was going to put Ishii on trial. And going after him myself and getting on Uncle Sam’s bad side in the process wouldn’t have been an especially smart move right in the middle of the Cold War.”

“And even after all that, you still consider the Consortium your enemy?” Elena asked. “We’re angels in comparison.”

“I’ve already heard that line of reasoning. The people who finance evil are as guilty as those who implement it. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no difference between Ishii and your Bleiberg. Both were obsessed with inflicting their repugnant visions on the rest of us. And the Consortium is continuing Bleiberg’s quest.”

“There’s no point in arguing. Neither of us is going to budge,” Elena said. “So let’s get back to business. There’s someone out there who is aligned with Shiro Ishii—perhaps ideologically. They’ve stolen biological material from a Consortium lab, and they’ve been having a grand old time testing it out in Moscow and the Czech Republic. Does that pretty much sum it up?”

“So it seems.”

She reflected for a few moments.

“But what exactly is this person or organization’s goal in creating weapons? Why Moscow? Was it because Unit 731 had been developing weapons to attack the Soviet Union? If so, why would the terrorists go after the Czech Republic?”

“The country did play an important role in similar research for the Eastern Bloc. But like you, I’m having a hard time finding a direct connection.”

Elena and Eytan heard a ding. Elena had just received an e-mail on her laptop. “Maybe that’s the information we need,” she said.

Five long minutes filled with the sound of Elena typing on her keyboard followed. Then came a brief silence.

“Morg, I think we’ve got our lead.”

“Let’s hear it,” he said.

“I’ll need a moment to explain. Do you have your doctored passport?”

“Of course. Where are we going?”

“Tokyo.”