of damage. Most of the German forces here belonged to the Kriegsmarine. The only reason they were here at all was to go after convoys bound for Russia. Shore patrolmen wouldn’t stand much of a chance against cold-blooded professionals.
One of those shore patrolmen rushed into the officers’ club. He looked around wildly before his gaze fixed on Lemp. “Come quick,” he shouted, “before those maniacs of yours tear this whole base to shreds!”
Just what it deserves, Lemp thought. The words almost came out-such were the dangers of three strong drinks. But he managed to stifle them. Instead, he said, “If they had more ways to blow off steam without getting in trouble, they’d do that. They wouldn’t brawl.”
“They’re a pack of criminals, nothing else but,” the shore patrolman retorted. “If you don’t calm them down, they’ll get courts-martial for making a mutiny. That’s a capital crime.” By the way he spoke, he thought the U-30’s men deserved no better than a blindfold and a cigarette.
“Take me to them,” Lemp said. He had to pay close attention to where he put his feet when he followed the shore patrolman out of the officers’ club.
It was cold outside, cold and dark. The northern lights’ wavering curtains danced in the sky, now red, now gold. Lemp spared the aurora a glance, no more. It wasn’t as if he didn’t see it on a lot of frigid winter nights.
He could have found the fighting without his guide. Men were yelling and screaming. Whistles blew frantically. Things broke-often, by the sound of it, over somebody’s head. Two shore patrolmen dragged a wounded buddy from the fray. “Making a mutiny,” the man with Lemp repeated grimly.
“They’re just drunk and disorderly, and they hate this miserable place,” the U-boat skipper answered, hoping he was right. If the lads had got the bit too far between their teeth, they’d be in big trouble in spite of anything he could do. To try to convince himself things were as he wanted them to be, he added, “I do, too. Who wouldn’t?”
“You weren’t smashing up the officers’ club when I found you, though… sir,” the shore patrolman said. Lemp judged a discreet silence the best response to that.
From out of the gloom ahead came a shout: “Halt! Who comes? Friend or foe?”
It wasn’t the kind of challenge the shore patrol would issue. Not only that, Lemp recognized the voice of the rating doing the shouting. “It’s me, Willi-the skipper,” he called back. “Playtime’s over. You boys have had your fun-and you’ve made your point, too.”
He waited. If Willi and the other sailors rejected his authority, they really were on their way to military courts and the brig, if not worse. Several men up there argued back and forth. When the chain of command broke, you had to figure out who had authority. At last, Willi said, “Well, come ahead, sir. You can help us pick up the pieces.”
“Enough is enough,” Lemp said as he advanced, trying to pour oil on troubled waters.
“Enough is too much,” the shore patrolman beside him put in, trying to make a bad situation worse. Lemp contrived to step on the man’s foot.
As had been true the last time things went arsey-varsey, not all the brawling sailors came from the U-30. But the rioters had done a more thorough job of tearing Narvik to pieces this time around. They weren’t brawling for the fun of it; they were brawling because they were furious about what passed for a base up here in the frozen north. Lemp did sympathize, but he had to hope very hard that they hadn’t got themselves in too deep.
“If you give it up now, you probably won’t land in too much trouble. You’re good fighting men, and the Reich needs you for the war effort,” he told them. “But if you push it even a centimeter further, they’ll land on you hard. You haven’t just pissed them off this time. You’ve scared them, and that’s worse.”
“They treat us like shit when we come in from a patrol, they’d better be scared,” growled a sailor from another U-boat. But the fight had gone out of the men. They’d made their point. There wasn’t much else they could do, not here at the frigid end of nowhere. They gave it up. Lemp headed back toward the officers’ club, hoping the argument he’d used with the sailors would also work on their superiors-and his.
Hideki Fujita loved being a sergeant again. He was meant to have two stars on each collar tab-he thought so, anyhow. And Unit 113 was a much smaller outfit than Unit 731 had been. That made him seem a much bigger frog.
Unit 113 was also a much less experimental place than Unit 731 had been. Here, they went out and did things. That suited Fujita fine, too. He was no big brain, and knew he never would be. But when somebody pointed him at a job, he would take care of it.
Not only that, he had a knack for getting the most out of the men under him. He’d knock them around when they deserved it, but he didn’t give them bruises for no better reason than to show his cock was bigger than theirs. As long as they hopped to it, they didn’t need to worry about him.
They went on spreading disease through Yunnan Province. If the Chinese died from the plague and from cholera, they wouldn’t be able to do so much with the military equipment England sent them. Even more to the point, if the Chinese feared they would die from those dreadful diseases, their panic helped Japan at least as much as real illness would.
Major Hataba assembled the men in the unit to say, “We have received an official commendation from the Imperial War Ministry in Tokyo for our contributions to victory in China. Banzai for the Emperor!”
“Banzai!” the soldiers shouted, Fujita loud among them. “Banzai!”
Hataba did not remind the men of Unit 113 that he’d also wanted to use bacteria against the English in India. No doubt he was doing his very best to forget all about that. Fujita remembered it, but not very often. It hadn’t happened, so it didn’t matter. Everyone was better off not remembering a plan that hadn’t come to fruition.
It wasn’t as if the Japanese didn’t have other things to think about. Fujita came from Hiroshima, in the south. Winters in Mongolia, Siberia, and Manchukuo had left him horrified and amazed. What was alleged to be the approach of winter in Burma left him horrified and amazed, too, but not the same way.
“Eee!” he said to another sergeant. They were drinking warm beer together; there was no other kind of beer to drink. “I thought I knew everything there was to know about hot, sticky weather. But this makes the worst August in Hiroshima feel like February.”
“Hai.” The other man nodded. His name was Ichiro Hirabayashi. He was a career noncom; he’d spent his whole adult life in the Imperial Army. Nothing seemed to faze him much. “Your clothes rot. Your boots rot. You start to rot, too. I’ve learned more about ringworm and jock itch and athlete’s foot and all that crap than I ever wanted to know since I got here.”
“You aren’t the only one,” Fujita said dolefully. “I had jock itch so bad, I thought I’d got a dose from one of the comfort women in Myitkina.”
Hirabayashi laughed at that. Fujita didn’t think it was so funny. A medical assistant had given him some nasty-smelling ointment to smear on his privates. It helped some. It wasn’t a cure, though. He still itched in all kinds of places where he couldn’t scratch without being crude.
The other sergeant drank more beer. In reflective tones, he said, “I hate this miserable place, you know? I hate the weather. I hate the rot. I hate the bugs. I hate the sicknesses. I hate the Burmese, too.”
“What’s wrong with the Burmese?” Fujita asked. He could see why Sergeant Hirabayashi hated everything else about Burma.
“They’re lazy. They’re shiftless. They’re thieving. They don’t talk any language a civilized man can understand.” Hirabayashi spoke with great conviction. A British colonial administrator pouring down gin and tonics in Mandalay a year earlier might have said the same thing, even if he would have said it in English rather than Japanese.
“Well, besides that?” Fujita said.
He set Hirabayashi laughing again. “You’re a funny fellow, aren’t you?” the older man said. “That’s good. You get up into Burma’s asshole the way we are and there’s not a hell of a lot to laugh about.”
“It’s war. Shigata ga nai, neh?” Fujita said.
Sergeant Hirabayashi nodded. “No, you can’t do a damn thing about it-except drink when you get the chance.” He suited action to word.
So did Fujita, who said, “One good thing, anyhow. At least the RAF doesn’t bomb us here. When I fought the Russians in Siberia, they were always trying to drop stuff on our heads. That wasn’t a whole lot of fun. Can’t say I miss it.”
“All right. There’s something,” Hirabayashi admitted. “But I’ll tell you, it’s not much.”
“I won’t argue.” Fujita poured himself another mug of beer and downed it, and then another one after
