The Prime Minister's Secret Agent(6)

Yamamoto lowered the binoculars. The young man’s ears turned red; he knew he’d spoken out of turn.

“I hope our differences may be resolved through diplomacy—peace is always better than war. Always. And anyone ignorant enough to want to go to war with the United States should think about that—especially General Tōjō and his Army hotheads!”

The young man cringed. “Yes, sir.”

“It’s the Army leaders who are at fault—a bloodthirsty lot.” The Admiral looked at the young sailor. “Take a message from me to Commander Fuchida when he lands, saying congratulations on a brilliant drill.”

“Yes, sir.”

The young man left and once again Yamamoto peered through his binoculars. “Genda’s mad plan is a gamble,” he muttered, watching the planes. “Six aircraft carriers, planes with modified shallow-water torpedoes, an attack on a Sunday at dawn … Refueling, weather … If we achieve a surprise attack …”

The Admiral shook his head. “No, it is up to the diplomats to prevent all this. They must prevent this.”


What Yamamoto didn’t know was that the reports they were sending from Honolulu to Tokyo were being decoded in Washington, DC. And not just by the Japanese Embassy, but by the Americans, as well. The Americans had broken the Japanese diplomatic code, which they called “Purple.”

At the U.S. Navy headquarters, an anonymous limestone office building on DC’s National Mall, Lieutenant Commander Alvin D. Kramer was also reading Kita’s reports, sometimes decrypting them faster than the Japanese Embassy did. A tall, thin man with the gaunt face of an ascetic, he was responsible for evaluating the intercepts and distributing them to the Navy’s higher-ups. His dark-blue uniform was spotless, the white of his collar matched the white of his hair, and the gold bars and stars of his epaulets glinted under the office’s fluorescent ceiling lights.

Kramer’s fiefdom was in the Main Navy and Munitions Buildings on B Street: a large airless, windowless room where men translated intercepted messages and women typed, the clatter of keys punctuated by the occasional shrill ring of one of the many telephones. The scent of ink and correction fluid hung in the stale air. The walls were lined with shelf upon shelf of files containing untranslated Japanese diplomatic decrypts, stacked so high that some could only be accessed by ladder. There just wasn’t enough interest, or enough manpower, to translate all of them as they poured in.

And so most of the messages from Consul Kita in Honolulu waited to be translated, often for weeks, sometimes for months. Above the heads of the workers was a line of clocks with black hands, ticking away the hours, minutes, and seconds in Tokyo, Washington, London, Moscow, Berlin, and Rome.

Colonel Rufus Bratton was two minutes late for his meeting with Kramer. In a sea of blue naval uniforms, Bratton stood out in his Army-issue brown coat and khakis, and the brown hat he carried under his arm. He was short and stocky, with an earnest face and balding pate. His buttons strained under the bulge of his stomach. The men who worked for him had nicknamed him “Grumpy,” after the dwarf in Snow White.

“Good morning, Colonel Bratton.” Kramer’s secretary looked up from her typewriter. Dorothy Edgars was new, but she’d made it her business to learn the names and faces of the key players in the office. She was in her late thirties, with dark hair streaked with gray pulled back into a severe bun. She’d landed the job because she’d spent over seven years in Tokyo, and was certified to teach Japanese at the high school level. “Would you like coffee, sir? Or tea?”

Bratton did his best to smile—but from him it looked more like a grimace. “No, thank you, Mrs. Edgars.” There was just the hint of a South Carolina twang in his voice.

Dorothy walked to a door marked ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE TO THIS ROOM with a brass letter slot marked CLASSIFIED MATERIAL ONLY and knocked.

“What?” barked an irritated voice from inside.

“Colonel Bratton is here to see you, Lieutenant Kramer,” she called, unruffled.

There was a pause, then the door swung open. “Come in, come in,” Kramer snapped to Bratton. “You’re late.”

Bratton glanced up at the clocks lining the walls of the inner sanctum. “Not by Japanese time,” he remarked. The men were a study in contrasts—one in blue, one in brown. One tall and one short, one lean and one stout. They were an unlikely pair, but had been forced to work together. For there was no central authority when it came to reading all the Japanese intercepts collected from the Army, Navy, and SIS, no clear-cut point of responsibility.