Island 731

Japanese phrase on a woman who spoke the language. She’d been more surprised than anything, and answered his question kindly, pointing down the hall toward the men’s room. He repeated the phrase now, “Benjo wa doko desu ka?”

Where’s the toilet?

When Kam didn’t reply, Hawkins repeated the phrase more forcefully. “Benjo wa doko desu ka!”

Kam began to fidget.

“You can’t speak a word of Japanese, can you, kid?”

Pulse, pulse.

“Ignore whoever is sending you the signals,” Hawkins shouted, “and answer my damn question for yourself!”

The response was laughter. But it didn’t come from Kam. It came from one of Hawkins’s cellmates.

39.

Hawkins nearly fell over when he spun toward the source of the laughter. At first he couldn’t believe the man had anything to do with this island. It seemed absurd. Even when the soft chuckle turned into a maniacal cackle, he thought maybe the kid had finally just cracked. It wasn’t until Bennett slipped easily out of his plastic cuffs and unlocked his cell door that Hawkins knew, without a doubt, that Bennett—the terrified, bumbling kid—had taken them all for suckers.

Bennett laughed and laughed, for nearly a minute. He tried to control himself a few times, but whenever he looked up at the prisoners’ shocked faces, he howled with renewed vigor. He held on to the operating table while the last remnants of his laughter worked their way out of his body. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Ohh, that was good. Haven’t laughed that hard since— You know, I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed that hard.”

Bennett looked at Jones and nearly started laughing again. “Oh, Harry. You look so wounded.” He suddenly changed his body language to that of a young, scared man. “Yes… yes, sir.” The reenactment of his feigned fear aboard the Magellan was perfect. He straightened back up. All of the fear and timidity disappeared.

“We trusted you,” Jones said, holding on to one of the cell bars. “My daughter trusted you.”

Bennett flashed a wicked grin. “Oh, she did more than that.”

Jones looked like he’d had the life sucked right out of him. He stumbled back and sat on the bench, his head down.

Hawkins tried to ignore the sharp emotions of the moment. “Remain calm in the face of danger,” GoodTracks told him once. “Fear can focus the mind if it is not allowed to blossom out of control.” He tried to put the pieces together, but Bennett wasn’t going to give him a chance.

Bennett spun toward Hawkins and stabbed a finger at him. “I can’t believe you left me in the jungle! Seriously. No sense of responsibility. Of course, I suppose I can’t blame you. Joliet is really the only one of us you care about.”

When Hawkins didn’t take the bait, Bennett leaned against the metal bars of his and Bray’s cages. “So, how about it? Has the dynamic duo figured things out yet?” He waggled a finger first at Hawkins, then at Bray. “You’re the sidekick, by the way. Going to have to lose that potbelly if you want to compete with Alpha Male over here.”

For a moment, neither man spoke. Bennett was enjoying this too much to humor his request. At the same time, it might be the only way to get answers.

Bennett hopped up on the operating table and kicked his legs like a ten year old eagerly awaiting an ice- cream cone. “C’mon, you have a captive audience, after all.”

Hawkins cut Bennett’s snickering short. “The island started out as a Unit Seven thirty-one facility, and maybe the original buildings continued to operate for years after the war. But this isn’t a Japanese site anymore.”

Bray took a sharp breath, no doubt figuring out where Hawkins’s line of thinking was going. “Holy shit.”

“What?” Blok asked. “Is this some kind of secret corporate lab?”

“Secret? Yes,” Bennett said. “Corporate, no.”

“The feed bag in the barn is written in English,” Hawkins said. “The warning message in that, that—”

“I call it ‘the gallery,’” Bennett said. “They were works of art. ‘Were’ being the operative word since you made me incinerate them.”

“—freak show,” Hawkins said, “was also in English. If Kam was really born here, and I think he was telling the truth about that, and he can’t speak a word of Japanese, then he was raised in an English-speaking community. His accent is either fake or learned from his father, who knew Japanese, but spoke English.”

Kam seemed to shrink at the mention of his name. Despite his betrayal and participation in the unforgivable kidnapping, torture, and murder of several Magellan crewmembers, and perhaps hundreds of other people, Hawkins suspected that his involvement was somehow compulsory.

“In 1946, the War Department took an interest in Unit Seven thirty-one,” Bray said. “They uncovered the Zhongma Fortress in Beiyinhe, Manchuria, but the research was gone, hidden by Shir?o Ishii, the microbiologist- slash-lieutenant general who conceived of and ran Unit Seven thirty-one. To the War Department it was a treasure trove of research and knowledge that the United States couldn’t easily acquire. Harry Truman himself signed the order to not prosecute Ishii and the rest of Seven thirty-one for war crimes, of which they would have easily been convicted. If Unit Seven thirty-one went to trial, their crimes and research would have been made public and available to our competitors, primarily Russia. He granted immunity in exchange for research and exclusivity. But that’s not all, is it? The War Department, or maybe some new splinter group or Black Op—whatever—kept this island operating. At first, maybe this place was mostly Japanese scientists from Unit Seven thirty-one, but over time, U.S. personnel came over. This facility and every horrible thing done here since 1946 belongs to America. That’s why it doesn’t appear on any maps—who else could hide an island? That’s why it’s surrounded by a thirty-mile-diameter garbage patch that deters ships from getting within radar range.”

“A broad assessment,” Bennett said. “You were close to the truth. After the war, the island’s facilities were maintained and the research done by the original Unit Seven thirty-one was pored over by a team of scientists, many of whom were the original staff who’d been pardoned of all wrongdoing. The island didn’t become a fully active research facility until twenty years later, long after it, and the scientists living here, fell off the United States’ radar. Within months, the research that Unit Seven thirty-one pioneered was back on track. But there was no way you could have known any of that, Bray, so I’m actually impressed. Maybe you can come work for us? We seem to be short on staff these days.”

“Because you sewed them into a ball,” Hawkins said, his emotions threatening to spill over as he remembered the people bound together. They’d been part of the island’s vile legacy, but what he’d done to them was sadistic.

“Just the ones I didn’t like,” Bennett said, and then he smiled wide. “You should have seen them the first time they woke up like that. Nearly tore themselves apart, didn’t they, Kam?”

Kam said nothing. He just stared at the floor.

“You’re lucky I didn’t throw you in with the lot of them,” Bennett said to Kam. He turned back to Hawkins. “I couldn’t do that to my own brother, though, could I? Well, we’re not really brothers. We grew up together, here on the island. But both of my parents were… what’s the word I’m looking for, Kam?”

When Kam didn’t answer, Bennett pulled a small black device with two red buttons from his pants pocket. It looked similar to a car remote. He pushed the larger button on the outside edge once.

Pulse.

“Human,” Kam said.

“Human,” Bennett repeated. “Thank you, Kamato Junior. In light of recent events that left many staff… incapacitated, and fearing exposure, the clandestine organization running the facility—which employs neither me nor Kam, by the way—sent someone out to check when communications went unanswered. She was a delightful