The flight to Tokyo took four hours, crossing the East China Sea with the smooth efficiency of modern aviation. Shen Tuo had never been on an airplane before—his entire life had been contained within the southern provinces, within the labyrinth of Pengcheng and Guangzhou and the islands of the outer archipelago—and the experience of watching the coastline recede beneath the clouds was both disorienting and liberating. The world was larger than he had imagined, and the labyrinth was only a small part of it.
Wenlan sat beside him, her face pressed against the window, her dark eyes reflecting the endless blue of the sky. She had exchanged her mourning white for a simple traveling dress, and her hair was loose around her shoulders. The transformation that had begun in the tunnel beneath the sea wall, when she had sung to her brother and saved Shen Tuo's life, was now complete. She was no longer the mute daughter of the Huo family. She was a woman who had found her voice and was ready to use it.
"Tokyo," she said, testing the word. "I have read about it in books. My father had a library of travelogues, accounts of foreigners who visited Japan in the years before the war. He kept them locked in a cabinet, but I found the key when I was twelve. I read them all, imagining what it would be like to see the world beyond the villa."
"And now you will see it."
"Yes. But not as a tourist. As a witness. We are going to Tokyo to find the Dragon's Memory, to uncover the final secrets of Colonel Yamamoto's network. It is not a vacation. It is a continuation of the labyrinth."
"The labyrinth is everywhere," Shen Tuo said. "Pengcheng, Guangzhou, Beijing, Tokyo. The truth does not respect borders. It just waits to be found."
Lu Zixuan sat across the aisle, his nose buried in a book about early Japanese computing that Doctor Liang had provided. He had become the scholar of the group, the one who absorbed technical information and translated it into language that the others could understand. His father's journal was never far from his hands, and he had begun to annotate it with references to the historical context that Doctor Liang's research had revealed.
"Professor Hayashi is a specialist in wartime cryptography," Lu Zixuan said, looking up from his book. "He has written extensively about the Japanese military's code-breaking machines. He believes that Yamamoto's database—the Dragon's Memory—was stored on a device called the Type-97 Cipher Machine, which was used by naval intelligence throughout the war. Most of the machines were destroyed before the surrender, but a few survived."
"And if the machine survived, the database might have survived with it."
"Exactly. Hayashi thinks that the machine may have been transferred to a military archive in Tokyo after the war, where it was forgotten. The archive was declassified ten years ago, but no one has systematically searched it for wartime records. Hayashi has been trying to get access for years, but the bureaucracy has been slow."
"Then we will help him," Wenlan said. "We have experience with bureaucracies. We dismantled the largest corruption network in the southern provinces. A military archive should not be too difficult."
Lu Zixuan smiled, a rare expression on his usually serious face. "I admire your confidence. But the Japanese bureaucracy is not like the Chinese bureaucracy. It is slower, more cautious, more resistant to outside pressure. We will need patience."
"Patience is something I have in abundance," Wenlan replied. "I was silent for twenty-three years. I can wait a little longer for the truth."
The plane descended through the clouds, and Tokyo emerged beneath them—a vast, glittering metropolis that stretched from horizon to horizon, its streets laid out in a complex grid, its buildings rising in clusters of glass and steel. It was the largest city Shen Tuo had ever seen, larger than Guangzhou, larger than Beijing, larger than any place he had imagined. The labyrinth of Pengcheng seemed small and provincial by comparison.
Professor Hayashi met them at the airport, a small man with spectacles and a perpetually worried expression. He was in his sixties, with gray hair and stooped shoulders, and he carried a battered briefcase that was stuffed with papers and books. His English was fluent but heavily accented, and he spoke with the precise, careful diction of a man who had spent his life in academia.
"Inspector Shen, Miss Huo, Mr. Lu," he said, bowing slightly. "Doctor Liang has told me about your work. The discovery of the Yamamoto archive, the decipherment of the Dragon's Cipher, the chambers beneath the sea—it is the most significant historical discovery since the end of the war. I am honored to assist you."
"The honor is ours," Shen Tuo replied. "Doctor Liang said you might know where to find the Dragon's Memory."
"Yes. Perhaps. The Type-97 Cipher Machine was developed by the Imperial Navy in 1942. It was used to encode and decode sensitive communications, but it also had a storage function—a magnetic drum that could record data and retrieve it later. Yamamoto's letters suggest that he used this function to create a database of his network. The Dragon's Memory."
"And the machine survived the war?"
"Most of the Type-97 machines were destroyed before the surrender. But there is a record of one machine being transferred to the Naval Archive in Yokosuka in August 1945, just days before the Emperor's broadcast. The record is incomplete, but it mentions a machine with a damaged magnetic drum—a machine that had been used for 'special intelligence operations' in the southern theater."
"That could be Yamamoto's machine," Wenlan said, her voice quickening. "The southern theater included Pengcheng and the surrounding provinces. If the machine was transferred to Yokosuka, it might still be there."
"The Naval Archive in Yokosuka was closed in 1952 and its contents transferred to the National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo. I have been trying to access the relevant files for years, but the Institute has been... reluctant. The documents from the southern theater are considered sensitive. There are concerns about what they might reveal."
"About collaboration," Shen Tuo said. "About the Chinese businessmen and officials who worked with the Japanese occupation. The same concerns that have been raised in Beijing."
"Yes. The Japanese government has never fully acknowledged the extent of the collaboration that occurred during the occupation. There are families here, as in China, who would prefer that the truth remain buried. But I am not concerned with politics. I am concerned with history. The Dragon's Memory, if it exists, would be a record of immense historical value. It would document not just the collaboration but the entire structure of the occupation's economic apparatus."
"Then we need to get access to the archive," Lu Zixuan said. "How do we do that?"
Professor Hayashi removed his spectacles and polished them with a cloth—the same gesture that Professor Tao and Deputy Director Wei had used, the universal tic of scholars and investigators who were trying to find the right words. "There is a way. The Institute allows access to researchers who have been approved by a review board. I have been denied three times. But I have recently learned that the board is chaired by a retired admiral whose grandfather served in the southern theater during the war. His name is Admiral Yamamoto."
Shen Tuo felt his blood go cold. "Yamamoto. The same name as the Colonel."
"Yes. Admiral Yamamoto is the grandson of Colonel Yamamoto Kenji. He has spent his career trying to rehabilitate his grandfather's reputation. He has written books arguing that the Colonel was a scapegoat, that he was unfairly blamed for the crimes of the occupation, that the evidence against him was fabricated by the Allies. If he learns that you have found his grandfather's archive—if he learns that the Dragon's Memory might exist—he will do everything in his power to suppress it."
"Then we need to approach him carefully," Wenlan said. "We need to convince him that the truth is more important than his family's reputation."
"You will not convince him. Admiral Yamamoto is not a scholar. He is an ideologue. He believes that Japan was the victim of the war, not the aggressor. He believes that his grandfather was a hero, not a war criminal. The evidence you have gathered—the letters, the cipher, the chambers—is a direct threat to everything he has spent his life building."
"Then how do we get access to the archive?"
Professor Hayashi smiled, a thin, humorless expression. "We do not ask for permission. We find another way."
He led them to a small office at his university, a cramped room filled with books and papers and the humming of an ancient computer. On his desk was a stack of documents that he had been compiling for years—floor plans of the National Institute for Defense Studies, personnel lists, security protocols.
"The Dragon's Memory, if it exists, is stored in a sub-basement of the Institute," Hayashi said, spreading the floor plans across the desk. "The sub-basement contains the archives that were transferred from Yokosuka in 1952. They have been sealed for decades, but the security is not as tight as the administration would like to believe. There is a maintenance tunnel that runs beneath the building, connecting to the sub-basement through a ventilation shaft."
"You want us to break into a government archive," Shen Tuo said flatly.
"I want you to retrieve the Dragon's Memory before Admiral Yamamoto learns that you are in Tokyo and moves to destroy it. The Institute's review board meets next week. If the Admiral learns about your investigation before then, he will have the archive purged. The evidence will be lost forever."
Shen Tuo looked at the floor plans, at the ventilation shaft and the maintenance tunnel and the sub-basement that held the secrets of eighty years. It was the labyrinth again, a new passage opening in a new city, a new truth waiting to be found. He had crawled through tunnels and swum through caves and deciphered codes that had been buried for generations. Breaking into a government archive was just another chamber.
"Very well," he said. "We will find the Dragon's Memory. And we will bring it into the light."
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