“That's revolting,” Yaeger said, shaking his head. “I hope the perpetrators paid for their crimes.”

“For the most part, they did not,” Max continued. “Nearly to a man, those in charge of the chemical and biological army units avoided prosecution as war criminals. The Japanese destroyed much of the documentation, and the camps themselves, before their surrender. American intelligence forces, unaware of the extent of horrors, or, in some cases, seeking to obtain the results of the ghastly experiments, looked the other way at the atrocities. Many of the Imperial Army medical professionals who worked in the death camps went on to become respected business leaders in Japan's postwar pharmaceutical industry.”

“With blood on their hands,” Dirk muttered.

“No one knows for sure, but experts estimate that at least two hundred thousand Chinese died as a result of Japanese chemical and biological warfare activity during the thirties and forties. A large percentage of the casualties were innocent civilians. It was a wartime tragedy that has only recently received much attention from historians and scholars.”

“Man's inhumanity to man never ceases to amaze,” Yaeger said solemnly.

“Max, exactly what pathogens and chemicals did the Japanese work with?” Dirk asked.

“It might be easier to ask which agents they didn't experiment with. Their known research in bacteria and viruses ranged from anthrax, cholera, and bubonic plague to glanders, smallpox, and typhus, with experiments conducted in pretty much everything else in between. Among the chemical agents employed in weaponry were phosgene, hydrogen cyanide, sulfur mustard, and lewisite. It is unknown how much was actually deployed in the field, again due to the fact that the Japanese destroyed most of their records as they retreated from China at the end of the war.”

“How would these agents have been used on the battlefield?”

“Chemical agents, possessing a long shelf life, are perfectly suitable for munitions. The Japanese manufactured a large quantity of chemical munitions, mostly in the form of grenades, mortars, and a wide range of artillery shells. Thousands of these weapons were even left behind in Manchuria at the war's end. The Japanese biological delivery systems were less successful due to the sensitive nature of the arming agents. Development of a practical biological artillery shell proved difficult, so much of the Japanese effort at fabricating the release of biological agents was focused on aerial bombs. Known records seem to indicate that the Japanese scientists were never completely satisfied with the effectiveness of the bio bombs they developed.”

“Max, are you aware of the use of porcelain as a bomb-casing material for these chemical or biological agents?”

“Why, yes, as a matter of fact. Steel bombs generated excessive heat upon explosion that would destroy the biological pathogens, so the Japanese turned to ceramics. It is known that a variety of porcelain bomb canisters were tested in China as aerial delivery systems for the biological agents.”

Dirk felt a lump in his stomach. The I-403 had indeed been on a mission of death with its biological bombs back in 1945. Fortuitously, the submarine had been sunk, but was that, in fact, the last of its failed mission?

Yaeger broke his concentration. “Max, this is all new history to me. I had no idea the Japanese actually used chemical and biological weapons in battle. Were they ever employed outside of China, against American forces?”

“The Japanese deployment of chemical and biological weapons was primarily restricted to the Chinese theater of war. Limited instances of their usage were also reported in Burma, Thailand, and Malaysia. My data sources show no recorded use of biochemical agents in battle with Western Allied forces, perhaps due to Japanese fear of reprisal. It is suspected that chemical weapons would have been employed in defense of the homeland, had an invasion of Japan been necessary. Of course, your father's discovery proves that chemical munitions were to be stockpiled in the Philippines for possible deployment in defense of the islands.”

“My father's discovery?” Dirk asked. “I don't understand.”

“I'm sorry, Dirk, let me explain. I received a toxin assessment from the Mariana Explorer taken from an ordnance sample recovered by | your father and Al Giordino.”

“You've completed your database search on the arsenic sample already? I thought you said you wouldn't have that completed until after lunch,” Yaeger asked the hologram.

“Sometimes, I can just be brutally efficient,” she replied, throwing her nose in the air.

“What's the connection?” Dirk asked, still confused. “Your father and Al traced a toxic arsenic leak to an old cargo ship that apparently sank on a coral reef near Mindanao during World War Two. The arsenic was leaking from a shipment of artillery shells carried in the ship's hold,” Yaeger explained.

“One-hundred-five-millimeter shells, to be precise,” Max added. “Ammunition for a common artillery gun used by the Japanese Imperial Army. Only the contents weren't arsenic, per se.” “What did you find?” Yaeger asked.

"The actual contents were a mixture of sulfur mustard and lewisite. A popular chemical munitions concentrate from the thirties, it acts as a fatal blistering agent when released as a gas. Lewisite is an arsenic derivative, which accounts for the toxic readings found in the Philippines. The Japanese produced thousands of mustard lewisite shells in Manchuria, some of which were deployed against the Chinese. Some of these old buried chemical munitions are still being dug up today.

“Was the Japanese Navy connected with the deployment of these weapons?” Dirk asked.

“The Japanese Imperial Navy was actively involved with chemical weapons production at its Sagami Naval Yard, and was believed to have had four additional storage arsenals at Kure, Yokosuka, Hiroshima, and Sasebo. But the Navy possessed only a fraction of the estimated 1.7 million chemical bombs and shells produced during the war, and no records indicate they were ever used in any naval engagements. The biological weapons research was funded through the Imperial Army and, as I mentioned, centered in occupied China. A primary conduit for the research activity was the Army Medical School in Tokyo. It is unknown whether the Navy had any involvement through the medical school, as the college was destroyed by wartime bombing in 1945.”

“So no wartime records exist that show chemical or biological weapons were ever assigned onboard Navy vessels?”

“None that were publicly released,” Max said, shaking her holographic head. “The bulk of the captured Japanese wartime records, including those of the Navy Ministry, were consigned to the National Archives. As a gesture of goodwill, most of the documents were later returned to the Japanese government. Only a fraction of the records were copied, however, and even a smaller portion have ever been translated.”

“Max, I'd like to explore the Naval Ministry records for information on the mission of a particular Japanese submarine, the I-403. Can you determine whether these records might still exist?”

“I'm sorry, Dirk, but I don't have access to that portion of the National Archives' data records.”

Dirk turned to Yaeger with an arched brow and gave him a long, knowing look.

“The National Archives, eh? Well, that should be a lot less dangerous than tapping into Langley,” Yaeger acceded with a shrug.

“That's the old Silicon Valley hacker I know and love,” Dirk replied with a laugh.

“Give me a couple of hours and I'll see what I can do.”

“Max,” Dirk said, looking at the transparent woman in the eye, thank you for the information."

“My pleasure, Dirk,” she replied seductively. “I'm happy to be at your service any time.”

Then, in an instant, she vanished. Yaeger already had his nose against a computer monitor, fingers flying over a keyboard, completely engrossed in his subversive mission at hand.