Dave Dawson at Truk

by Robert Sidney Bowen

All Or Nothing

Commander Drake, of U.S. Navy Intelligence, took off his cap and ran fingers through his hair, and gave a little shake of his head. He had just completed a minute inspection of the house where Dave Dawson and Freddy Farmer had been held prisoner, and now he stood with the two of them in the very prison room. The sergeant, who it seemed was named Ryan, and a whole squad of troops were standing guard on the building. The two still cringing brown men, who Commander Drake guessed were Koreans, were in the sergeant's custody. And the street out in front was now packed with the curious who had been drawn like flies to the scene. And incidentally, the bodies of Yammanato and Kato had been carted away from the public view.

"It's still like somebody telling me a crazy dream he had!" Commander Drake gasped, and jammed his cap back on his head. "I can still hardly believe it!"

"Well, it was real enough, sir," Dawson said with a grin. "There are a couple of witnesses right here to back up that statement. But as the old saying goes, truth is lots of times stranger than fiction."

"You're telling me!" Commander Drake said, and made a gesture with one hand that included the entire house. "This nest of the little yellow rats right here under my very eyes all this time. And it took you two to smoke them out. And I don't mean that as a pun. Why, heaven knows how much information they've collected in this very house, and then slipped out of the Islands to be used against us. Why, that radio down in the basement is just about as powerful as the naval radio at Kaneohe."

"I sure wish that Yammanato hadn't gone yellow and taken his life," Dawson said grimly. "That's why I shot him in the hip. To save him for you, I hoped."

"Well, don't let it make you feel too bad," Commander Drake said with a shake of his head. "There's one thing about a Jap, and I suppose we should give him some credit for it. I mean, when he doesn't want to talk there's nothing in the world that can make him talk. When you shot him he knew that he had failed, and would be in disgrace as long as he lived. So the only thing left for him to do was to take his life. Yammanato, he called himself, eh? Well, I'll bet a small sum of money that I won't find him listed under that name, or even listed as living here, when I look him up. Dawson, and you too, Farmer, do you realize what you've done for me? Why you've accomplished in a day what I haven't been able to do since the time of Pearl Harbor. Why, what there is here in this house may prove to be of inestimable value to the Navy, and to the Army, too. Those files in that room downstairs may have every Jap spy this side of Tokyo listed."

"I hope so, sir," Dawson murmured as he stared up at the smoke-smudged skylight. "But as far as I'm concerned it's a failure. Farmer and I missed the boat. And that is exactly what I mean."

"Quite," Freddy Farmer echoed gloomily. "If we hadn't been so utterly stupid as to let ourselves get captured that night, we might have identified that Nazi who is aboard one of the carriers. He might even have led us here, and the whole thing would have been cleared up very nicely. As Dawson says, it's a blasted failure for me, too. Good heaven! Just think of what may happen to that carrier force. You say you didn't gain an inkling of his identity, sir? Not one of the fighter pilots aboard the three carriers made any suspicious moves."

Commander Drake didn't reply for a moment or two. He frowned, pursed his lips, and balled one clenched fist into the palm of the other hand. Then he sighed, and shook his head.