Marshall sat unmoving. "That's right, sir. Other than causing the movement of our prisoners to target areas, you're right, the bombing of Kokura has had virtually no impact on the Japanese. I would suggest that we suspend nuclear operations against Japanese cities and create an inventory for tactical use in support of the landings on Kyushu. Conventional, nonnuclear bombing of Japanese targets will, of course, continue."

"Of course," Truman said in a dejected whisper. "Agreed."

"I'm sorry, Harry," Byrnes said solicitously, "we all had such high hopes that the bombs would end the war."

Marshall paused. There was another point to make. "We are starting to see the volume of decodeable traffic dry up, and that will hinder us. The Japanese now have few outposts and even fewer ships with which to communicate, and their home island radio transmitters have been destroyed to a very large extent by our bombers. They are now relying on telegraph and telephone, which we cannot intercept, as well as using human messengers and couriers."

"Another ironic price of success," Truman mused. "May I presume we are reading Stalin's mail as well?"

Marshall nodded solemnly. "Not as well as we'd like. You may also presume that we are reading British messages, and that they are reading ours."

Byrnes found it amusing. "Lord, what a wicked, wicked world we live in."

Truman stood and the two others left. Now he could walk the corridor to the real White House and try to relax with Bess and his Margaret. Maybe he could have a drink and play the piano. Maybe, he laughed aloud, he would play the piano so loud the whole wretched building would collapse on his head.

He chuckled. At least that would solve one of his problems.

In the six months since she'd been commissioned, the officers and crew of the U.S. submarine Moray had seen only limited action in the Pacific. With the Japanese military and merchant fleet shrinking through combat attrition, there were fewer and fewer targets for a prowling sub to find and sink. Locating even those handful that remained involved hazardous trips through Japan's Inland Sea, that myriad of channels that separated and flowed through the multitude of large and small islands in the Japanese archipelago.

To the Moray's captain, Comdr. Frank Hobart, the last patrol had been a frustrating disgrace. Nothing sighted and nothing shot at. They had returned to base with all torpedoes snug in their racks and were silently ridiculed by their more successful and experienced peers. Thus, he was delighted to be sent to Okinawa for what was described as a special mission to Japan. How special he didn't care. One more chance, Hobart thought, for a few kills, and a better chance at staying on in a postwar navy that was sure to shrink and want to keep only the best and the brightest. And the most aggressive, he kept adding. He had to make a name for himself before it was too late.

Neither he nor his crew were unduly surprised when the five men and their equipment came on board at Okinawa. The men were all dressed in black and all had their faces covered like bandits. Even more curiously, one of the men, the smallest of the five, had only one arm.

The Moray was a Gato-class submarine stationed off northern Kyushu, one of more than sixty in that efficient and effective category. She was 307 feet long and displaced 1,525 tons. Along with ten torpedo tubes, she had a three-inch deck gun and a 20mm Oerlikon antiaircraft gun. The Moray was a formidable weapon and had been built at Mare Island, California, in late 1944.

The sixty-five men in her crew normally lived in cramped and abominable conditions, which were exacerbated by the presence of the five additional men and their equipment. To make matters worse, the five secreted themselves in the captain's cabin and wardroom and stayed there for the duration of the short voyage, thus pushing out the officers who would normally have lived there.

From Okinawa to Kyushu was less than five hundred miles, and Captain Hobart was confident he and his crew could gut out the overcrowding for another chance at the Japs. His crew was not as confident. While skilled and professional, many had this nagging feeling that Hobart was aggressive to the point of recklessness, and most did not share his confidence in wanting to tweak the enemy one last time. They also wanted the five interlopers gone from their boat and their little breathing room back in their cramped world of tubes, pipes, and bad air.

When the Moray surfaced at night just a mile off the northern coast of Kyushu, everyone was relieved that at least part of their journey was over. With precision and dispatch, the five men, still black-clad and masked, emerged on deck with their gear and a rubber raft. Silently, they pushed off, and four men paddled while the fifth, the one-armed man, sat unmoving in the center of the small craft. Within minutes they had disappeared into the darkness. The sky was only partly cloudy, and starlight and moonlight made the Moray fairly visible if anyone knew where to look. Prudently, her skipper submerged her farther, until only her conning tower was above the surface of the gently rolling sea.

"Skipper?"

"Yes, Randy?" Hobart tried not to show his impatience. His second-in-command, in his opinion, did not show proper aggressive spirit. Randy Bullard was a reservist who'd made it known that he wanted to go home more than anything else. Well, he would go home when his captain decided, and not before.

"Captain, I strongly suggest we submerge to periscope depth. There's just too much of us showing and we are very close to enemy territory."

Hobart sniffed the air and looked about. It was humid and he thought it might soon rain. There was no sign of anything on the sea or in the air, and the brooding hills of Japan, so tantalizingly close, were dark and still as well. It was the middle of the night and the Japanese were asleep, even those who had survived the nuclear assaults on Nagasaki and Kokura. He wondered if he should risk a look at Nagasaki 's harbor after finishing this assignment.

"Negative, Randy. Let's air the place out. It stinks like a stable down there. Besides, those banditos in the raft have to be able to see us in order to find their way back to us." Besides, Hobart thought silently, he didn't want to give in to his weakling of an exec.

Only just before the raft had shoved offhad Hobart been given the final portion of his orders, which informed him that only one of the five men- he presumed they were Marine Raiders- would actually be leaving the sub. He was dismayed and knew his crew would be unhappy as well, because it meant that the intolerable living conditions would be improved only slightly. Screw it, he thought. Get them back here so I can look for some Jap shipping.

After what seemed forever, a lookout spotted the raft on its way back. Despite his annoyance at having to keep them, Hobart felt relief and admiration for the boys who had paddled their human cargo to Japan and come back without incident. Hobart thought it would be wonderfully exhilarating to be able to say he'd actually set foot on Japanese soil. He ordered the sub to surface higher so that the men and their raft could be taken aboard via the deck hatch.

A little less than half a mile away, Comdr. Mochitsura Hashimoto looked transfixed through the periscope of his submarine, the I-58. The I-58 had just returned from its last patrol confident it had sunk an American battleship, only to find that Japanese naval intelligence now believed it was the heavy cruiser Indianapolis that he'd sent to the bottom of the Pacific. No matter, he had been successful. For quite some time, Japanese sub victories had been few and far between; thus, it was with a kind of delight that he saw the silhouette of the conning tower piercing the surface. The shape was American and he was insultingly close to Japan.