The Year of Counting Souls Read online

  Maria Elena relayed this. Her tone sounded more conciliatory than the lieutenant’s. The reply from the Filipino officer was just as even tempered.

  The young nurse licked her lips before she translated. “Sir, he says he is unable to do that. He doesn’t have an available radio at hand—they are all being used for military purposes.”

  “What the devil does he think this is?”

  Kozlowski looked around at the men who’d climbed out of the trucks to stretch their legs and listen. His eyes narrowed. “Fárez, are you still messing around with that dog? Take that stupid rope off and let it go.”

  “But, sir!”

  “That’s an order, Fárez. Oh, for Pete’s sake, will someone help him?” Kozlowski added as Fárez leaned on his crutch, trying to bend over. “Good, now get into the truck. That goes for all of you. We’re going forward on this road one way or another.”

  Stumpy, released from his leash, trotted a few feet away and cocked his head at the corporal. Fárez looked crestfallen. He stared, frowning after the lieutenant, who was stomping back to the truck. Fárez licked his lips, then snapped his fingers at the dog. Stumpy, perhaps looking around at the unfamiliar surroundings, came trotting back to his would-be owner. The corporal scooped him up and gave him a hug. The other men were climbing into the truck, and Louise made her way over.

  “You’re not really going to disobey orders, are you?” she asked.

  “No,” Fárez said glumly. “Just saying good-bye. Anyway, the lieutenant is probably right. At least he’s got a chance out here in the country. Away from all the bombs and guns.”

  Louise thought Stumpy would have survived in Manila just fine. He’d probably survive out here, too. Follow the road to one of the small villages and insinuate himself with the local pack of street dogs.

  But what harm would it do to keep him around? Fárez and some of the other men had taken to tugging on Stumpy’s ears and giving him bits of shoelace to wrestle. It was good for morale, took their minds off their injuries and the constant threat of enemy attack.

  “Go get in the lieutenant’s truck,” she said. “Leave Stumpy with me.”

  Fárez grinned. “Yeah? What are you gonna do?”

  “There’s a crate of bandages that need washing. Stumpy can sleep in there, out of the way.”

  “And that humbug, Kozlowski? What about him? He’ll find out sooner or later.”

  “You let me worry about Lieutenant Kozlowski. He’ll lose his bluster when we get somewhere safe. Now hurry, before you get yelled at again.”

  Dr. Claypool raised his bushy eyebrows as Louise climbed into the truck with the dog squirming in her arms. “Ah, so now you’re in charge of the mutt.”

  Stumpy licked her face before she could get him into the crate, and his breath was rank. She shuddered to think what filth he’d been eating. As soon as they got to Baliuag, she’d have him dewormed and treat his mange with carbolic acid.

  Moments later they were in motion again. The head nurse was with Louise this time. Frankie complained of a splitting headache and declined to help Dr. Claypool when one injured young man started bleeding through his bandages. She told Louise to do it while she closed her eyes to rest.

  As the two trucks and their evacuees from the hospital rolled north on the road, a Filipino soldier came into the road, waving his hands and shouting in English. They’d found their translator at last, but if he had anything useful to say, Kozlowski wasn’t stopping to hear it. Somehow they made it through without being stopped by the Filipinos.

  Their next destination was the American-held town of Baliuag. A company of American tanks held it. The Japanese were invading on bicycles. Surely the town was safe.

  Chapter Four

  Captain Yoshiko Mori stumbled into disorganized fragments of the unit he sought a few miles south of Manila. He ordered his driver to stop the truck and climbed out.

  The Fourteenth. He’d found them.

  Mori slipped his hand into his jacket pocket, where he felt the three thin sheets written in mixed kanji and hiragana in his brother’s fine hand. Had they been mailed to anyone else, the sheets would have been inspected by the army’s Monthly Postal Review Report. But Mori was Kempeitai, military police, and the mail got through. The ugly enormity of the letter was plainly evident, yet no censor’s hand had touched his brother’s writing. No other eyes had seen his words.

  He’s here. Are you ready for this?

  Bicycles lay scattered about. Japanese soldiers sat smoking or drinking tea in the shade of a transport truck. Most carried the exhausted look of men who’d been up for days, fighting and clawing their way across Luzon toward Manila. There was still hard fighting to come.

  A captain came over to shout at Mori to get his vehicle off the road but stopped when he saw the insignia and rank. He eyed the young adjutant accompanying Mori, with his white armband and the red kanji reading “Law Soldier.”

  The captain saluted Mori. It was not an impressive salute. His jacket was undone, his face red and sweaty from the heat, and there was mud on his trousers and under his fingernails.

  “Is this the Fourteenth?” Mori asked.

  “Elements of it, sir.”

  “Why the devil are you stopped here?” Mori asked.

  “They say we’re not ready. They say we’ve outrun our supplies.”

  When the captain took off his round eyeglasses to wipe off the mud, his eyes had a distant, myopic look. Mori pegged him as the bookish sort, a logistics man. Well, it took all kinds, but this one wouldn’t be pushing the advance. It would take braver men, more dedicated to glory for the emperor and the rising sun, to secure the final victory.

  “Supplies. What does that matter?”

  “Sir?”

  “The Americans are beaten,” Mori said. “The Pinoys are cowards, coddled by the Americans—they won’t stand and fight. A hundred men could take Manila.”

  The captain put his glasses back on and peered at Mori with a look of placid petulance. “It does little good to catch a thief and then look around for the rope to bind him.”

  “And so you have orders to stay here and wait for rope?”

  “My orders were insufficient. I’m waiting for clarification.”

  Ah, so that was it. Gekokujō. The lesser ranks lead from below. Men who obeyed by disobeying. Someone had given the order to take Manila. Someone else had decided that to do so was to expose oneself to greater risk.

  Not that gekokujō was always cautious; sometimes, the opposite.

  Mori had seen plenty of it in the Kwantung Army in China, where he’d been serving until this recent folly. There, the Kwantung, openly defying politicians, and sometimes the entire Imperial Japanese Army, had set about expanding the war in China and fighting border skirmishes with the Soviets, dragging the rest of the country along with it.

  He took in the dozens of men sprawling in the tall grass, stacking crates, pouring gas into trucks, dragging small field pieces into position with a lethargy befitting the tropical heat. A single enemy plane could have wreaked havoc, a single American tank could have rolled through and destroyed the encampment with little opposition.

  Why are we here, anyway? We belong in China, not this sweltering hell. Not fighting Americans.

  Like his brother, Sachihiro, Yoshiko Mori had lived several years in the United States. He didn’t underestimate them as so many did, those who thought the Americans were soft and weak, who boasted that Japanese troops would take San Francisco by summer. That was foolhardy. He’d seen American energy and determination, knew their vast resources. It would be a long, costly struggle to defeat them. But this particular battle was won, or should be.

  Mori removed a small notebook from the breast pocket of his uniform. The pocket opposite the one holding his brother’s letter. “What is your name?”

  The man’s petulance faded, and now he looked worried. “Captain Soto. Why do you wish to know?”

  “Because I am a law soldier, and it is my duty to ask ques
tions. I am tasked with pacifying central Luzon, including Manila, and I must know who I am dealing with in the regular army.” Mori turned to his adjutant. “How many Captain Sotos do you suppose are in the army?”

  His adjutant looked thoughtful. “Hundreds, probably. It is a very common name.”

  The young man’s name was Hiroshi Fujiwara, and he spoke in a cold, precise voice. Lieutenant Fujiwara was compliant and absolutely loyal to Captain Mori, and that showed in the earnestness on his face, his look of devotion as a boy might show to his father, although the two men were only about four years apart in age. The intensity of his voice tended to startle other men and make them all the more eager to answer Mori’s questions.

  “We arrested a man named Soto last week for cowardice under fire,” Fujiwara added. “He was shot, I believe. Isn’t that right, sir?”

  “Beheaded.” Mori rested a hand on the hilt of his sword. “There was no time for a trial.”

  “Yes, sir,” Fujiwara said gravely. “I remember now.”

  This was all fabricated. All part of the game Mori and his adjutant played when dealing with stubborn IJA officers. Remind them of the power of the Kempeitai, the military police. The secret police, as most people thought of them. The beheaded man was a deserter by the name of . . . well, who could remember that now? The fellow had been mentally unbalanced, with a record of bizarre behavior. And Mori had not done the beheading, only witnessed it.

  “What a strange coincidence,” Mori said. “Two Sotos have come to my attention in the past week.” He turned back to the captain. “Your full name? I wouldn’t want to confuse you with the headless coward.”

  Soto licked his lips and blinked several times rapidly. “Captain Setsuko Soto.”

  “And what are you doing here, Soto? Why are you not pushing forward?”

  “We’re waiting for the Forty-Eighth to help us reach the outskirts of the city. The Seventh Tank Regiment is in the town of Baliuag. Once they break through the American lines, we can pincer the city from both directions.”

  “Baliuag? Where is that?”

  “A small town north of Manila, toward Bataan, where the Americans are retreating. Here, I’ll show you.”

  Soto reached into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out a map, which he started to unfold. Mori waved his hand dismissively, and Soto put it away with a frown.

  “Anyway,” Soto continued, “until the Forty-Eighth breaks the enemy lines, I will hold position here, then push forward. More companies are on their way.” Soto stood a little taller. “If you have issues with that, you should speak to Colonel Matsui—he gave the orders, not me.”

  “Did he?” Again Mori thought of gekokujō. Did the resistance to orders go higher up? Apparently as high as this Colonel Matsui, at least.

  “Yes, sir, he did.”

  Other soldiers had been watching the exchange with a mixture of caution and worry on their faces. Two more soldiers rolled up but, instead of joining the men lounging in the grass, stood astride their bikes, watching.

  Enough of this. On the road behind, the Kempeitai was already setting up offices in captured towns to pacify the population. Mori had come ashore in Lamon Bay with crates of leaflets in English and Tagalog, urging partisans and abandoned rear units to surrender and promising humane treatment to those who obeyed.

  Mori was allowing himself to be distracted; he had information to collect about casualties and supplies so that he could plan for the military rule of Manila. All of that was urgent. But first he must take care of this ugly business with his brother.

  “I am looking for a Corporal Sachihiro Mori. He is in your unit, I believe.”

  Soto frowned. “Is he in some sort of trouble?”

  “No. Where is he?”

  It was clear from Soto’s expression that he didn’t believe that Corporal Mori was not in trouble, and these IJA units tended to protect their own. Mori expected that Soto would obstruct, and was not disappointed.

  “I—I’m not sure. Don’t think I have a man by that name, to tell the truth.”

  “Wasn’t he hit by the Americans?” someone said. Mori turned to see one of the newcomers on bicycles nodding. “That’s right,” the soldier continued. “I’m pretty sure Mori was one of them.”

  “Hit?” Mori’s mouth was suddenly dry. “What do you mean? An ambush? Snipers?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Captain Soto said. “A pair of American trucks came up the road and ran down some of our men before we could shoot them. They killed a few, injured some others. Mori might have been one of them.”

  “Your memory seems to be improving, Captain. Why don’t you show me where this happened, if you can manage to remember.”

  “It was just up the road—didn’t you pass through the field hospital?”

  Mori hadn’t taken note of it if he had. He’d been focused on reaching the vanguard of the advancing infantry. But now that he thought of it, he’d passed a rough tent encampment where surgeons were working on all manner of injured. Not far up the road.

  He pointed to his vehicle and glared at Captain Soto. “Get in the truck. And button your jacket.”

  It only took a few minutes to get to the site of the incident. Several mangled bicycles lay heaped to one side of the road. They’d be collected later, repaired. Nearly as unceremoniously, four bodies lay in a neat line. Someone had put their steel helmets over their faces, and from a distance they appeared to be sleeping. But when Mori climbed out of the truck and approached, he saw that two were soaked in blood, and another’s legs bent at strange angles.

  Mori reached into his jacket pocket and felt his brother’s letter. A cold hollow formed in his belly.

  You were too American for your own good, brother.

  His brother had kept the name Sammy instead of Sachihiro when the brothers returned to Japan after Father died. He played baseball and preferred checkers and chess to Go. Spoke poorly of the army when home on leave.

  And yet, curiously, Sammy had clung to Japanese customs in Hawaii. He’d trimmed bonsai trees, helped Father care for the Shinto shrine in the yard with its torii gate, decorative stone lanterns, and purification font. He’d taught his little brother, Yoshiko, how to wash his hands and mouth, ring the bell, and pray. Made sure he read his lessons in Japanese. All things the younger brother had not appreciated at the time.

  But if his brother were Japanese, truly and deeply in his soul, why had he done the horrible thing he’d confessed to in the letter?

  Mori removed the helmets from the faces of the dead men one by one and breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t see his brother. He turned to Lieutenant Fujiwara and shook his head.

  “The corporal is not here.”

  “He must have only been injured,” Captain Soto said. He removed his glasses and polished them again. He put them back on, then immediately removed them to clean once again. “I suppose you could check the field hospital.”

  The field hospital sat on the side of the road a couple of hundred meters farther back. It was a pair of white tents, and Mori knew they’d have red crosses painted on top, although the warning was probably unnecessary, as the enemy air force had been chased from the sky by the heroic pilots of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force. As if to underscore this thought, a pair of Mitsubishi Ki-21 bombers lumbered overhead on their way to bomb enemy positions to the northwest. No need for escort fighters. Mori wondered if they were on their way to Baliuag. If there was a tank battle brewing, air support might prove critical.

  Mori, Fujiwara, and Soto made their way toward the tents. One of the native buffalo stumbled out of the waist-high grass, snorting a warning. Mori waved his hands and shouted for the beast to clear off.

  “Careful,” Soto said. “Carabao are dumb and mean. You’ll get gored if you don’t watch yourself.”

  Mori drew his pistol, scoffing. “It’s an overgrown cow, and it’s in our way.”

  He shouted again, and when that didn’t work, fired his pistol in the air. The animal looked
like it would wander off the trail, leaving them a path to the hospital, and Mori holstered his pistol and gave the captain a smug nod.

  “You see. Like everything else in this miserable country—you need to show them you’re in charge, is all.”

  Suddenly the carabao wheeled and charged. The three men scattered into the grass. The animal followed Mori, head lowered. The horns didn’t look so cow-like now; they looked like curved spears. He fell as he was about to be overrun, and one of the horns hooked toward his face. It grazed past, and miraculously the animal didn’t trample him as he lay helpless, but passed over and disappeared, snorting, into the grass.

  Mori was unharmed, but his sword had slipped from its sheath and fallen in the mud. He was in a foul mood as he cleaned it with a handkerchief, and snarled at Fujiwara when the young man asked if he needed help. Captain Soto wore a barely concealed smirk, and Mori glared at him until it vanished.

  His brother was not in the field hospital, which was taking on a more permanent shape. Even as doctors operated on patients, men hammered up boards for walls and replaced the tarp roofs with corrugated metal, gradually turning tents into actual buildings. A light drizzle drummed on the tent roofs, but the thickening sky threatened heavier rain.

  Most of the injured were victims of snipers or mines, but Mori found three men who’d survived the incident with the American trucks. They lay stretched out on tatami mats while bare-chested carpenters constructed a wall behind them.

  “Yeah, Mori was there,” one man confirmed.

  He spoke through a mouth stuffed with bloody gauze, as the collision with the truck had knocked out his front teeth. His eyes were puffy, nearly closed, and he pulled the gauze aside to spit saliva and blood into a chipped ceramic bowl.

  “Went off with the Americans,” he added.

  “What do you mean?” Mori demanded.

  “Took a ride in their truck.” The soldier let out a gurgled chuckle, and he spit more blood before stuffing the gauze back into place. What came out next was garbled, and Mori wasn’t sure he heard it properly. “Sammy Mori loves those Yanks.”