Prelude to Pearl

After the conclusion of the “Great War,” the United States looked with growing apprehension at Japan’s escalating territorial expansion amid the worldwide political turmoil engendered by the “Great Depression.” To obtain secret information on the plans and objectives of a potential Pacific adversary, U.S. Navy intelligence sends Francis Marian, a young sailor with a near-perfect photographic memory and unusual Chinese and Japanese language skills, to the Philippines. Francis is soon drawn into a conflicting, complex world of clandestine negotiations and secret and dangerous missions in China, Japan, and Indo-China. But the United States is not the only world power seeking information on Japan’s plans for supremacy in the Pacific. Hitler’s Germany, in its embryonic pursuit of world domination, sends Willy Rosin, posing as the international businessman Werner Breidstein, to the Philippines to determine if Japan can be a viable ally or will become only an impediment to Germany hegemony in the Pacific. Breidstein’s mission transforms into a distorted quest for personal power and revenge of his mother’s suspicious death when Willy was a young boy in the Philippines. Breidstein leaves a trail of ruthless murder as he and Marian trust and parry across the lands of the Orient, from China to Japan, to Indo-China, to the islands of Micronesia, and to the Philippines, as Japan is inexorably drawn closer and closer to war with the United States. Shinako Fujimori, a young, innocent Japanese woman, is betrayed by an ambitious Japanese naval officer she expected to marry, but finds solace with Breidstein after her father is assassinated. But she will be betrayed by some. Seeking revenge for her father’s murder, she unwittingly becomes instrumental in both Francis and Breidstein separately learning that Japan will attack Pearl Harbor within only hours. As the two men clash in the ensuing hours and days, startling secrets will be revealed.