The Citadel (9 page)

Fatima moved forward, sticking to the shadows of the buildings, getting closer to Shibimi's position, keeping one eye on the ronin, who was slowly moving forward also, focused on the car.
"Do not kill him," Araki hissed, weapon at the ready just behind Fatima's left shoulder.
Fatima had a feeling one of them was going to get their man as Shibimi fired a couple of rounds at Nishin, who then fired back. The crack of Shibimi's pistol going off reverberated through the small village, and people began to spill out of doorways, some of them armed with automatic weapons.
Fatima realized this was going to turn into a disaster, and she needed it to be over quickly. She snapped a shot at Nishin, hitting him in the side. As Shibimi turned in confusion to see who had fired, she sent a three-round burst into the old man's legs.
"Abu Sayif!" Fatima cried out, stepping out of the shadow into the glow of one of the arc lights. "Bind those two men," she ordered as the closest armed villagers recognized her.
Araki turned to her in surprise as a half-dozen men ran to the two wounded men, securing them. "Who are you?"
Fatima turned the smoking muzzle of her weapon toward Araki. "I am the leader of the Abu Sayif. And perhaps now you can tell me who you really are before I kill you. And then I will extract the truth from our two wounded friends over there."

CHAPTER 4
Oahu, Hawaii

"It appears I wasn't the only one to get a packet from David," Royce said.
Vaughn and Tai had been discussing what they had learned from MacIntosh, combining it with the information that Royce had given them earlier, when Royce walked in the door of the bungalow.
"What do you mean?" Tai asked.
"I just received a message from the Organization. The new head of the Abu Sayif, a woman named Fatima Al-Sheef, apparently got either the same or a similar packet from David that we received."
"Why?" Vaughn asked. "Why would he do that?"
"I don't know," Royce said.
"How about venturing a guess," Vaughn prompted.
Tai jumped in. "To put the pressure on. If Lansale had just sent the information here, then we could sit on it. But by sending it to the Abu Sayif, he's rung the starter's bell from his grave. And it's actually a three-way race because the Organization now knows about the Abu Sayif package."
"Race to where?" Vaughn asked, although he already knew.
"To find the Citadel," Royce said, "and uncover what's in there. And its link to the Organization."
"If it still exists," Vaughn said. "It's been down there a long time."
"I guess you're going to find out," Royce said.
"And what are you going to be doing?" Tai asked.
"I'm going to do what the Organization has ordered me to: try to stop the Abu Sayif before they get too close. So in a way, I'm taking out your competitors."
Vaughn considered that. "But won't the Organization simply send some people down to the Citadel and take care of things?"
Royce smiled. "From the way the message was worded and the way David sent us this information, I have a feeling that the Organization doesn't quite know the location or contents of the Citadel either."
"How can that be?" Tai demanded. "The Organization ordered it built."
"I think
part
of the Organization ordered it built, and David organized it and oversaw it," Royce said, "but I have the feeling the information was never sent all the way up to the top."
"Left hand not knowing what the right is doing," Vaughn said as he considered that. "So there might have been people like Tai and me before, inside of but not part of the Organization who did their own thing."
"I have no doubt David played a very dangerous game," Royce said. "Just as I am."
Tai ran a hand through her short hair. "My big question is: what did they build down there and why? We're talking 1949. Truman is President. The Cold War has just begun. We know about the nukes, but it doesn't make much sense that the only purpose of this base was to store some nuclear weapons in Antarctica with no delivery system."
"Whatever the Citadel is," Vaughn said, "it was important enough to kill a lot of people to cover it up."
"So how do we find it?" Tai asked.
"We need an expert," Vaughn said. "Someone who knows Antarctica." He looked at Royce. "I don't suppose you have one handy?"
"Actually"
—Royce drew the word out—"I do. And I already made an initial contact. A man named James Logan. He works for the environmental group Earth First."
"Great," Vaughn said. "A tree hugger."
"There aren't any trees in Antarctica," Tai said.
"Logan has done work for me before," Royce said. "He might love trees but he enjoys money more. Plus we have leverage on him."
"What kind of leverage?" Vaughn asked.
"You don't need to know that," Royce said. "Suffice it to say I have a strong enough carrot and a powerful enough stick that Logan will do whatever you need."
"Where's he now?" Tai asked.
"Australia," Royce said. "Saving kangaroos or something." He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a sleek satellite phone. "You can call him on this." He slid a piece of paper across. "Here's his number."
Royce dialed in the number, then punched the speaker-phone option and put the phone on the wood table.
"Hello?" a voice with a rich Australian accent answered.
"Is this James Logan?"
"Who are you?"
Royce spoke up. "It's Royce, Mr. Logan. Calling with two friends of mine from Hawaii."
"Fuck. Hawaii. Must be early in the morning there, isn't it?"
Tai rolled her eyes. "It's a little after eleven."
"It's a little after midnight here." The voice waited for an apology, and getting none, moved on with a sigh. "All right. What do you want?"
Tai spoke. "Royce tells us you've been to Antarctica several times."
"Yes. I've been there four times. I also wintered over at the Earth First base there three years ago. Why? What's up?"
"We've received information about something," Tai said, "and we were wondering if you could give us some help."
"'Wondering'? Do I have a choice, Royce?"
"No."
The voice was resigned. "What's the information?"
Tai continued. "We've discovered that the United States military built a secret installation, called the Citadel, in Antarctica in 1949."
"What kind of secret base?"
"We don't know," Tai said.
"Where exactly was the place built in Antarctica?"
"We don't know," Tai repeated. "That's why they call it a secret, Logan."
"Well, I've been down there and I've also talked to a lot of people stationed down there, especially at McMurdo, and I've never heard anything about a place called the Citadel. It would be pretty difficult to cover something like that up, although 1949 was a very long time ago."
Tai waited in silence, prompting Logan to speak again. "Even though it was built in 1949, it would still have broken the 1959 treaty, as the treaty was retroactive. Any base that is built down there, even if it's temporary, has to be open for inspection by any of the other signees of the treaty. If a base is hidden, well, then it certainly isn't open for inspection.
"Second, if the U.S. military built it, then it's probably some sort of military base, and if it still exists, that would be a gross violation of not only the letter of the current 1991 accord governing things in Antarctica, but also the spirit. Tell me what you have on it so far."
Tai gave a quick summary of the engineers, the photos, the planes, but left out the information about the atomic weapons. When she was done, Logan asked her to describe the photos carefully. He was silent for a little while before speaking again.
"Well, High Jump Station evolved into McMurdo Station, which is the largest base in Antarctica. So we have a start point. You got this Citadel being a four-hour flight by MARS Boxcar from there, so we have a radius. But we don't even know if it's south, east, or west. Most likely south or east, though."
"Why do you say that?" Tai asked.
"If the U.S. military built this thing and wanted to keep it a secret, as you've said, then they'd probably want it to be far away from any other countries' potential stations, based on how Antarctica was sliced up for research. The Russians eventually had a base in Leningradskaya, about five hundred miles to the west of McMurdo, and the French built one farther along the coast in that direction. South from McMurdo there's nothing until you hit the South Pole itself. So that would seem like a good place to hide a base. Maybe in the Transarctic Mountains.
"East from McMurdo is Marie Byrd Land, and there was nothing permanent out there for almost two thousand miles until '71, when the Russians put a base in, called Russkaya, right on the coast there to the east. But if it was 1949 and I was going to put some sort of secret base in, that might be a direction I'd go."
Vaughn was making notes of all that. "Anything else you can think of that might help?"
"I'll work on it and check around," Logan said. "When are you arriving down under?"
Tai looked up at Royce, then back at the phone. "As soon as possible."
"Fly through Auckland, New Zealand, and I can meet you there," Logan said. "Then we can take a hop down to McMurdo, which would be the place to stage out of."
"We'll touch base once we're en route," Tai said, shutting off the phone.
"Pretty vague," Vaughn said. "Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack. And it's a needle buried under ice. There might not be anything on the surface we can spot even if we get a good idea of where the base is."
"There is something I could do," Royce said, "but it's dangerous."
"And that is?" Tai asked.
"Check the Organization's database that I have access to for information on the Citadel. I couldn't do it before, because I have no doubt such an inquiry would be flagged. But now that I've been tasked with closing out the Abu Sayif and their interest in the Citadel, I don't think it would be that unusual for me to query the d-base reference. Might fly under the radar as part of the operation with which I've been tasked."
Vaughn shrugged. "Without any more data, we've got no chance of finding this place, so you might as well go for it. We'll be out of here as soon as we have something solid, so you'd have to deal with any fallout."
Royce sat down at the table and opened his laptop. "I have restricted access to the database," he warned as he began typing, "but let's see what I can come up with."

Area 51, Nevada

The flashing light on the secure phone drew the old man's attention away from the computer displays lining the wall of the command center. Despite his years, there was still a bounce to his step as he walked over to his desk. He was tall, with a stomach that was flat as a board. His silver hair framed a distinguished face that attracted women a third his age and made the men around him choose their words with care. A long finger reached out and hit the speaker button. A brief whine and a green light on the phone indicated the line was secure from eavesdroppers.
"This is Dyson."
"This is Analyst Six. I am calling you as per instructions, sir. My people have detected an inquiry into the secure database that you have coded for alert."
Dyson's slate gray eyes focused on the phone as he leaned forward slightly, the muscles in his forearms rippling as he rested them on his desk. "Subject?"
"Citadel."
The old man's eyes closed briefly and then opened. "Source?"
"Our man in Hawaii, Royce."
Dyson considered that. "Royce already has the tasking reference the Abu Sayif, correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what has he discovered?
"The name exists in our database. In David Lansale's file."
Dyson bit back a curse as some of the pieces fell into place. "What else?"
"Not much. The original funding for the Citadel fell under Operation High Jump conducted in Antarctica, with additional funding covertly added via the Black Eagle Trust. It's classified as an engineering operation. That's all that is in the Citadel file."
"Did Lansale conduct an unsanctioned mission?" Dyson asked.
"No, sir. There is an official sanction number on the file. I cross-referenced the number and found it linked with two other missions. The first actually predates the Citadel. An American submarine tender was diverted in the South Pacific during the closing days of World War II to refuel a submarine."
"So? What's so special about that?"
"It was a Japanese submarine. And the sub tender went down with all hands a day after making the rendezvous and refuel."
"Not a coincidence," Dyson said.
"I don't know, sir, but it seems unlikely. There is no further information on this or where the submarine was headed."
"The second link?"
"A covert mission in 1956 during Operation Deep Freeze. A long overland convoy traveled to the Citadel from the coast of Antarctica and made a delivery there. The convoy was never heard from again."
The body count was getting very high, Dyson thought. While the Organization was not averse to whatever cost was necessary to accomplish its goals, this was definitely beginning to look like a very major operation.
"What did the convoy deliver?"
"Among other things, four Mark-17 thermonuclear warheads. The largest yield bombs ever built by the United States."
Dyson closed his eyes briefly. "Have the warheads ever been accounted for?"
"No, sir. The most likely explanation is that they must still be there in the Citadel."
"Anything more?"
"Negative."
"Thank you."
Dyson turned the phone off, then picked up the tersely worded communiqué that had just been decrypted and then delivered to him. It was a directive from the High Counsel in Geneva, head of the North American Table, to present himself in person. And the subject of the meeting was to explain the Citadel and why Geneva had no records of such a place.
Which meant he was going to have to explain the scanty yet startling records that the North American Table had of it.

Philippines

"He will die with twenty-four hours," the medic informed Fatima, pointing at the young Japanese man who had been Araki's target. "And he"—the medic indicated the old man in the bed next to him—"will live if we treat him. If not, he won't last forty-eight hours."
Fatima turned to the Japanese woman who had saved her in the tunnel. Araki was tied to a chair facing the beds the two wounded men occupied. "And you," Fatima said to her, "will die immediately if you lie to me."
Araki glared at her, face flushed in anger. A half-dozen Abu Sayif guerrillas were gathered round, weapons at the ready. Fatima walked up to Araki and drew a knife. She laid the cold flat edge of it against Araki's cheek.
"Perfect skin," Fatima said. "It would be a shame to see it marred. You said you work for CPI—Central Political Intelligence. And you were following this man, Nishin." She removed the knife and pointed it at the young, wounded Japanese man. "Why?"
"To find out who he works for," Araki answered.
"He is Yakuza," Fatima said.
"Check to see if he has Yakuza marking," Araki suggested.
Fatima nodded, and two men ripped off Nishin's bloody shirt. His skin was unblemished. Fatima shrugged. "There are those among the Yakuza who are unmarked in order to be able to do covert missions."
"He is not Yakuza," Araki said.
"Telling me what he is not is not very useful," Fatima said. "Tell me what he is."
"He is a member of an Organization the CPI has spent decades trying to infiltrate or at least find out what its real name is. The best we have come is to learn that it is referred to at times as the Far East Table. I told you this earlier."
Fatima frowned. "You mean the group people call the Organization, with a capital letter?"
Araki nodded.
"We have heard of this Far East Table," Fatima said. "I recently killed one of their members, but she could tell me nothing. If this man, Nishin, is an agent, I am willing to bet he knows little and would say nothing."
Araki shrugged. "It was the best lead we had. And we wanted to know why he came here to the Philippines and what his mission was."
Fatima frowned as she tried to piece together this puzzle of bodies around her. She had been after Shibimi because the Yakuza had sent her that way. Araki had been after Nishin, and he had been after Shibimi. Fatima felt a sudden rush of pressure as she realized the information she had received had not come from nowhere and there was a very good chance someone knew she had this information.
There was no time to fool around. She drew her pistol and walked over to Nishin. He was glaring up at her. She fired once, the round making a small black hole in the center of his forehead. She turned. Both Shibimi and Araki were staring at her wide-eyed.
Araki was the first to speak. "What did you do that for? He was my—"
"You will be very lucky to leave here alive," Fatima said. "He was a ronin, a soldier, who knew nothing other than he was here to kill this man." Fatima went over to Shibimi and placed the muzzle of her gun between his eyes. His face was impassive as he regarded her.
"Where is his guard?" Fatima called out, and Shibimi's eyes flickered ever so slightly.
Two of her men dragged up the wounded guard, his stomach heavily bandaged. They slammed him against the side of the building and he cried out in pain. Fatima jammed the muzzle of her gun right into his wound, and he screamed.
"Who are you?" she asked, keeping one eye on the old man. He was much too concerned about the old man to be a simple bodyguard. "How are you related to Shibimi?"
She jammed the gun once more, and he screamed, then she stepped back and waited. When he caught his breath, the man managed to speak. "I'm his grandson."
Fatima spun back to Shibimi and walked up to him. "I will make you a deal. You tell me what you know of the submarine I-104 and I will have my people take your grandson into Manila and drop him at the hospital. You do not tell me, he dies."
Shibimi closed his eyes for several moments, then opened them and nodded ever so slightly. Fatima gestured, and the two men holding the guard dragged the wounded man toward a waiting car.
"I am upholding my end," Fatima said. "Talk."
Shibimi watched his grandson tossed in the backseat of the car and as it drove away up the dirt trail. When it was out of sight he returned his eyes to Fatima. "There were three 400 series Sensuikan Toku–class submarines built near the end of the war: I-400, I-401, and I-402. They were the pride of the fleet. The largest submarines ever built up until the 1960s, when the first ballistic missile submarines were built. They were underwater aircraft carriers."
"I've never heard of such a thing," Fatima said, noting that Araki had gotten over her shock about Nishin's death rather quickly and was listening intently.
"I was assigned to the I-401," Shibimi said. "It was indeed huge. We were all stunned the first time we saw it. Over four hundred feet long and forty feet high. There were 144 men in the crew. It had a waterproof hangar built onto the deck in front of the conning tower. Inside were three bombers. Fully loaded with fuel, we had the potential to sail back and forth across the Pacific without refueling."
"Where
did
you sail?" Fatima demanded.
Shibimi closed his eyes and sighed. "The I-401 was built with a specific mission in mind. We were to sail to the Panama Canal and use our three planes to bomb it, shutting it to traffic. But the war ended before we could do that mission. We were at sea when the surrender was signed. We'd been at sea for two months. Doing trial runs. First heading toward the Panama Canal. Then sent north toward the American West Coast, where we were to rendezvous with a freighter and take on biological weapons to attack San Diego and Los Angeles."
"Biological weapons developed by Unit 731," Fatima said.
Shibimi looked startled, then nodded. "Yes. But that mission was canceled when we were within fifty miles of San Diego. No explanation was given. We were directed to rendezvous with a ship in the South Pacific, east of Australia. It was a long journey back across the ocean.
"When we arrived at the location, we were shocked to see an American submarine tender. They were as shocked as we were, but they had the same orders. They refueled us. And we received new orders. To head here, to the Philippines."
"Where you were met again by Americans," Fatima said.
Shibimi nodded. "Yes. We surfaced at night, not far from here, off Corregidor. Then an American cargo ship came alongside. Our three airplanes were dumped overboard. In the hangar were placed numerous, unmarked crates."
"Golden Lily," Fatima said. "Part of it."
"Yes," Shibimi said. "Although neither I, nor any member of the crew, knew it then. We also took on a large amount of food store. And received sailing orders once more."
"To go to Antarctica," Fatima said.
"If you know all this, then why are you asking me?" Shibimi said.
"I don't know everything," Fatima said. "Where in Antarctica?"
"Due south. We sailed to the edge of the ice pack of the Ross Sea. Then we waited until it was summer and the pack had receded as far as it could. The captain was the only one who knew what we were doing. The rest of us just followed orders. We picked up random radio transmissions at times. We found out about the dropping of the atomic bombs. Details of the surrender."
Shibimi's eyes grew distant. "That's when the suicides began. A man whose family had been in Nagasaki was first. Then others. In the first month while we sat off the coast, eight men killed themselves. They saw no hope, no reason to live. The captain would not explain what our mission was. Then something strange happened."
Shibimi fell silent for a few moments, and Fatima gestured for one of her men to give him some water. His wound had stopped bleeding.
"What happened?" Fatima finally asked.
"Two more submarines arrived," Shibimi said.
"American?" Fatima asked.
"No, German," Shibimi said. "Because I was Kempetai, I talked to the member of one of the crews who was Gestapo. He told me an interesting story. He said the Germans called Antarctica Neuschwabenland and considered it part of the Third Reich. Or had. The Third Reich no longer existed by the time we met. He told me that before the war, the Germans had sent planes down to Antarctica and dropped pennons with Nazi flags over as much of the land as they could, a naïve way of trying to claim the land as theirs.
"In 1943, Admiral Donitz, who commanded the German submarine forces, claimed that the Germans had created a fortress in Antarctica, a boast of a rather feeble attempt to establish a base there. But the agent told me this was not the first time his submarine, U-530, had been to Antarctica. In fact, it was its sixth trip. And every time they brought supplies and, like us, unmarked crates. This was their last trip along with their sister ship the U-977."
"What happened then?" Fatima asked. She found it strange to be talking about such a cold and faraway land here in the middle of the sweltering Filipino jungle. And to have a man who was in the Japanese Kempetai talking about meeting a Gestapo agent off the shores of Antarctica.
"A landing party was organized under the command of one of the German officers who had obviously been there before and was experienced in traversing the land. It consisted mostly of Germans, but a few members of our crew were part of it. They struck out over the ice cap covering the Ross Sea.
"We waited. And finally we received a radio call from the party that they were in place. All three submarines submerged. One of the German ships was in the lead. You have to remember, we were sailing almost blind under the ice. We homed in on the sonar signal the land party was broadcasting.
"When we arrived, we found that the land party had blasted holes through the ice so that each submarine was able to extend a snorkel and radio transmitter up to the surface. But that was it." Shibimi fell silent for a moment. "It made no sense to the rest of the crew. We couldn't surface. We couldn't bring the land party aboard. The captain didn't give the rest of the crew time to. He ordered almost everyone with the exception of myself and his executive officer into the rear crew compartment and the engine room. Then he had us seal the hatch from our side.
"I think it was merciful what we did. We were cold anyway. Our country had been devastated in the war. Surrender was not an option. Most of us had nothing to go home to, and if we did, we would have been in disgrace. We pumped the air out of the rear compartments. It was over relatively quickly. Relative, when you hear the echoed screams of men dying and their banging on the hatches and pipes and hull. One hundred and twenty-nine men were killed."
Fatima glanced over at Araki. She had gotten more than she had bargained for on this mission.
Shibimi continued. "The captain then said we must commit hari-kari. He said it would be his place as captain to be last. However, those were not my orders. I had to act quickly. I drew my pistol and shot the executive officer and captain. I powered the ship down except for the radio, which I put on a certain frequency at low power to continuously transmit. Then I put on a dry suit and a rebreather. I went into the escape hatch in the conning tower. I sealed myself in then opened the outer hatch.
"The water was cold even with the dry suit, on the verge of becoming ice. It was pitch-black under the ice. I made my way by feel to the snorkel and radio transmitter. I grabbed on and made my way up in the darkness, fearful that I would find them enclosed in ice when I reached the ice pack. But the hole that had been blasted had not completely iced in yet. I was able to wiggle into it, pulling my way up, still afraid that as I got closer to the surface it would be sealed in.
"I barely made it. I did hit ice. I had a pick with me. In that tight space I chipped away, my air diminishing, and then I broke through. About six inches of ice had already formed, and I was able to crawl through, onto the surface. It was night. I saw a single lantern, like a beacon, in one of the tents the ground party had taken. I staggered over to it, the water on the outside of my dry suit freezing as I did so. I made it inside. A stove was still going, but they were all dead.
"The Germans had drank poisoned wine. The Japanese had used the knives and guns to kill themselves. I stripped off my dry suit and scavenged for cold weather clothing. Then I slept among the dead for a long time. When I awoke, I gathered supplies.
"Then I made my way back to the coast. A six-day journey for me on foot. When I got to the coast a trawler was waiting for me. The crew knew nothing of me or why they were picking me up. They brought me back to Japan, where I could report the mission accomplished."
Shibimi stopped speaking.
"Where were these submarines left?" Fatima asked.
"After all these years," Shibimi said, "I still remember the coordinates." He spoke them, and Fatima copied them down.
"What else have you done for the Far East Table?" Fatima asked.
Shibimi gave a bitter laugh. "That was it. Why do you think I am here in the Philippines driving a stupid tugboat and peddling in arms? They tried to kill me, and I escaped. I came here and here I have been all my life. They wait for me." His voice had dropped. "The souls of those men, they wait for me."
"Then join them," Fatima said as she fired her pistol.
Then she turned to Araki. The Japanese woman stared back at her. "What are you going to do to me?"
"Do you want to know the truth?" Fatima asked.
Araki nodded.
"Then you must come with me."
"Where?"
"To Antarctica, of course." Fatima turned to one of the Abu Sayif. "Dispose of the bodies," she ordered. "I want the freighter to be prepared. Take her to Manila and link her up with the crew. I will need everyone at the ship."