Chapter 1
Iriomote Island, Japan
Therewere bastard trees and there were wait-awhile trees and there was a building that didn’t exist.
The bastard trees had masses of six-inch thorns protecting their trunks. Touch one of those and you’d learn a sharp lesson. The wait-awhile trees were less stabby, but equally annoying. Their thin, hook-tipped vines dangled from branches, catching, entangling and immobilising the unwary.
But it was the building, not the flesh-piercing thorns, that held everyone’s attention. It was squat and grey and had been reclaimed by nature. Thick roots had prised apart stonework and collapsed one of the walls. Guano from the fruit bats roosting in the tree canopy had painted the roof white.
The group stared in astonishment.
‘What is it?’ Dora, a woman in her early twenties, asked. She was halfway through her gap year. In six months she would do what her father wanted and take a job in the City, then marry her portfolio manager fiancé and knock out a brood of zestless children.
‘I’m not sure,’ their guide replied. He was called Andrew Trescothic and he had trained in the black art of jungle navigation with the British Army in Belize. ‘Probably left over from the war. There are supposed to be some Operation Ketsu-Go buildings on the island somewhere.’
‘Ketsu-Go?’
‘The suicidal defensive strategy designed after the Emperor realised he could no longer win. Called for the entire Japanese population to resist an invasion under the banner “The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million”. He thought if the Americans were facingcatastrophic casualties it might undermine their will to fight for an unconditional surrender. Maybe opt for an armistice instead, one that didn’t involve occupation of the Japanese mainland. Part of the strategy was to build inland fortifications to store fuel and ammunition. This building’s not accessible for fuel, so I suspect it was used as an ammo dump. The allies emptied them after Japan’s surrender, but most of the buildings were left intact.’
‘Wow,’ Dora said. ‘So nobody’s seen this since the war?’
‘It’s possible.’
It wasn’t. Trescothic was a no-frills kind of guide and he had been leading groups across the jungle island for five years now. He knew where all the Operation Ketsu-Go fortifications were, and he made sure each group ‘discovered’ one on every trip. After they had taken their photographs and had a poke around, he would leave it a year or so. In an environment as harsh as this it wasn’t long before the building looked as though it hadn’t been touched in decades. He figured it was a harmless deception and it certainly increased the size of his tips when they got back to base camp.
‘Can we go in?’ Dora asked.
Trescothic shrugged.
‘Don’t see why not,’ he said.
‘Cool!’
‘But watch for snakes.’
All that remained of the wooden door were rusty hinges. Dora and most of the others entered cautiously.
The last one, a man wearing an unacceptable hat, turned and said, ‘Aren’t you coming, Andrew?’
He shook his head.
‘Maybe later.’ Andrew knew what was in there. A boxy room and a large underground storage area. Japanese signs on the walls and animal scat on the floor. Same as all the others. He reckoned they’d be inside for fifteen minutes or so. Five upstairs, five in the underground storage room and five more for happy snaps. Plenty of time to get a brew on.
He hadn’t even had time to pop in a teabag when he heard Dora scream. He sighed. They’d probably stumbled across a dead animal.It had happened in a different building a couple of years earlier. A group discovered the decomposed body of an Iriomote cat, a subspecies of leopard only found on the island. It had fallen through a hole in the roof and trapped itself. Poor thing had starved to death.
Trescothic got to his feet and entered the old fortification. He could hear the group. They were in the underground storage area. He jogged down the stairs but was met by Dora running back up.
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she said.
He sighed again. These city slickers really needed to toughen up. The same thought crossed his mind at least once a trip. These modern-day explorers weren’t as robust as the squaddies he had trained with all those years ago. The slightest thing upset them. A dead animal, a mean comment on Twitter, a dodgy statue …
He fixed his face into the stern, no-nonsense ex-soldier the group expected him to be, and entered the storage area.
Thirty seconds later he was back outside, panting heavily, scrambling for the satellite phone in his rucksack.
It wasn’t a dead animal that had caused Dora to scream.
This was something else entirely.