Miyako gave the lady the best smile she could. “Domo arigato.” The words grated through her bruised throat.
“You haven’t eaten much yet, but I’m sure your appetite will improve. Plus, I’ve extended myself to cover your medical expenses. The doctor isn’t cheap, ah?”
Miyako nodded. She knew all about that. And she also knew where this was going.
“We needn’t weigh you down with trivial concerns such as room and board and medical expenses.” Imai-san leaned forward, her delicate heart-shaped face luminous. “The last thing I want is to slow your recovery with such burdens. I have good news. I can arrange a generous cash advance that will more than cover it all.”
Wait. How generous? And how much in advance? “Papa-san...in hospital.”
“So.” Imai-san’s penciled eyelids narrowed. “Perhaps you remember a bit more now.”
“Some details.”
“In the hospital.” She sat back. Her eyes were slits. “Naturally, that will be quite expensive.”
“Hai.” How much would she need to cover doctor bills?
“Well...” Slowly. “I can take that into account. I’m sure a pretty thing like you must have some skills. Some ways to make an evening pass quickly for a lonely gentleman who might be, ah, far from home.”
Her pulse began to hammer again. “I’ll need time.”
Imai-san made an expansive gesture. “Don’t concern yourself. I can give you a week or ten days to feel better.” She pursed her lips. “Now, what shall we make out your contract for?”
Miyako screwed her eyes shut and considered that question. If she couldn’t get the cash in the next couple of days, it meant nothing. But if she could—ten thousand for the poison. How much to keep Papa-san in the hospital a while longer?
She looked steadily up at Imai-san. “Seventy-five thousand? Above what I owe you now.” She held her breath, her chest filling with ground glass. It felt like a life sentence. Well, she’d be serving one anyway before she’d ever repay it.
Imai-san arched her brows and laughed a gentle laugh. “I’m afraid your notion of what your services are worth might be a bit exaggerated. I can’t possibly go over sixty thousand, however much I might wish it with my far-too-tender-hearted nature. And that would be for a two-year commitment and would include what you owe me.”
“I could be flexible.” She swallowed, trying to moisten her raw throat. “When can you pay the advance?”
“As soon as you’re ready to see clients.”
Her stomach plunged like a cormorant after a fish. If she couldn’t have the money this week, the amount made no difference, and they might as well spend their time comparing sizes of acorns. “Please. No sooner? You’ve been so generous.”
Imai-san’s smile chilled by several degrees. “These are very standard terms, Ishikawa-san.” She leaned toward her, eyes taking on a fierce glitter. “If you need the cash, you’ll simply have to get better quickly, ah? And don’t plan on leaving this establishment until that happens.”
“But I’m worried about Papa-san. Is anyone seeing to him? And the hospital—they might want money now.”
Imai-san stood and glided to the shoji, placing her feet with the precision of a jungle cat. She pushed the panel aside and turned to Miyako. “You simply can’t put this kind of pressure on yourself, Ishikawa-san.” Her voice was plum wine, but her jaw was firm and her eyes steely. “It’s not good for your health. And there is something you need to understand.”
“Hai?”
“I have a business to run. You represent a substantial investment. What if you decide to run off on me? Leave me stuck with your doctor’s bills?” She conjured a cigarette and her long holder from her sleeve. “No, my dear. Until you’ve signed your contract and started work, don’t talk to me about leaving this establishment.”
Miyako stared at the woman. She hardly knew what she’d say to Papa-san now. It would get even harder as the days passed.
Imai-san lit her cigarette. “This couldn’t be simpler, my dear. As for your father, you’re entering into a contract with me that will enable you to pay his hospital bill. He’ll understand that. Even little Kawamura should be able to explain that to him. I’ll send her now if you’d like.”
“You...you can’t...just keep me here.”
Imai-san gave her an ironic little smile. “Actually, I think I can.” She reached out, plucked at Miyako’s thin cotton sleeve. “How sad you don’t have any clothes you can wear outside in this weather. And quite apart from that, do you think I’m the only one with a business interest in this place? Trust me, you’d rather deal with me than my associates. They are not pleasant people.”
20 April 1942, Nanchang, China
First Day Captive
The soldiers pulled Dave from the dining room and bound the blindfold on. He barely registered it. Too much to absorb.
Not an ordinary prisoner of war. A murderer and a criminal.
Criminal? The raid was heroic. Exactly what every true-blooded American had been thirsting for. They’d jump up and cheer when they heard about it at home. Probably were toasting him already.
But that was half a world away. Over here in China, it was hard to see how things could get any worse.
Impatient arms tugged and prodded him up a set of stairs. Down another corridor. Something solid—probably another rifle butt—met the small of his back. He stumbled forward. One of them yanked off his blindfold. The door thudded closed behind him.
Dave folded up on the floor.
He’d never been so exhausted, but sleep wouldn’t come. Torturing thoughts circled him like ravenous wolves. Chen’s eyes on him. The kid’s last words to him. Get airplane. Kill many Japs. For us.
Lord, if you’re listening, please get me back in this war. For them.
The way he’d skulked and hid. Let a whole village of Chinese peasants fight his battles for him. He never lost his nerve in Payback’s left seat. In her cockpit, between two roaring seventeen-hundred-horsepower engines and with a ton of destructive power in the bomb bay behind him, he could do anything. He was a god. Not down here.
He needed a—
No. No drink.
The officer’s pistol, cold and hard against his forehead. Think about that tonight, David Der-ham.
He was thinking. Would they execute a prisoner of war?
His empty bottle in the officer’s hand. And—this image so clear it could have been burned on his retina—Chen’s dad’s corpse on the rutted street.
Execute me? Sure they would.
Dave must have dozed after all. Voices outside the window ripped him out of it. Daylight flooded the room. He groaned and stretched. His head pounded, and his mouth was dry as a desert gulch.
Shaky legs carried him to the window. It gave him a view down onto the broad steps in front of the building. Probably a dozen soldiers in mustard-colored uniforms surrounded a black truck, rifles at ready. Three men in aviator jackets and handcuffs stood in a line on the bottom step. Two blond heads and a tousled brown mop. Smith, Braxton, Watt.
Vitty emerged from the building, a trio of soldiers prodding him along.
No. They had Payback’s entire crew. He kicked at the wall. “No, no, no.” He punctuated each word with a fiercer kick. The last one sent a plaster chip flying.
A detail of soldiers burst into the room and cuffed him, then delivered him downstairs. His crew—two officers, two enlisted—stood lined up with their backs to him.
But what a difference from the last time he’d seen them. Scruffy. Mud-streaked trousers. Matted hair. Still, each of them held shoulders square and heads high.
His men—not cowed. He stood taller himself as his heart thrilled with pride.
They shoved him into place next to Watt. He took a sidelong look down the line. Watt’s jaw worked, but the Texan didn’t give him a word or a glance. Vitty gave him a fierce glare, then looked away.
“Horyo.” A rifle butt slammed into Dave’s solar plexus. It took a moment before
the blazing pain subsided and he could focus on the Japanese captain in front of him.
Eyes forward. Got it.
The officer’s raging face was the last thing he saw before the blindfold went on.
It was tough to piece together what was going on with that stinking blindfold on. They pushed and prodded the airmen onto a truck, which rumbled on for a while. He caught the clamor of people and livestock when they slowed. After a few minutes en route, they motored across a smooth surface and stopped. The Japanese unloaded the five of them onto a stretch of asphalt.
His blindfold had worked itself a little looser. A set of narrow metal stairs on wheels moved into the sliver of ground he could see beneath it.
No mistaking the whiff of avgas. A plane. They were putting them on an airplane.
I can fly this thing. I can fly this thing. His heart repeated it with each step he took.
All he had to do was figure out a way to overpower the guards and grab the yoke. And they’d be on their way to Chungking. Right back in it. Sure, it would be hard to fly with handcuffs, but he’d work it out.
The soldiers prodded him up the stairs first. He stepped onto the plane. The cockpit was to his left, but he could see a soldier’s boots beneath his blindfold. They’d wisely posted a guard in front of the cockpit door.
Someone grabbed him from behind and twisted him into the narrow aisle. He tried to imagine some way he could fight his way back into it. Get his hands on that yoke.
But there were handcuffs and a blindfold and armed soldiers on every side. A couple of Japs marched in front of him. He could hear more of them shuffling behind. Every step aft took him farther from that cockpit. And there was nothing he could do about it.
They put him in his own row, with Jap guards seated behind him and more in the row in front of him. If they’d surrounded each of the four prisoners in front of him the same way, that would made around a dozen armed Japanese between him and those controls. Versus five malnourished airmen.
His moment of optimism died.
A soldier released one of his handcuffs. His heart soared again—until the man snapped the cuff around his armrest.
Deflated, he slumped into his seat and closed his eyes.
This mission—his mission—couldn’t have gone more wrong. The only way he could damage the American war effort further would be to break down under torture. Let them worm critical information out of him.
What would that take?
How much could he take?
His head throbbed.
They rolled across the tarmac, turned and stopped. The pilot ran up the engines. She shuddered, straining for the air like a thoroughbred. Like Payback used to do. They thundered down the runway and, after a breathless moment, rotated and found the sky.
The thrum of the engines was hypnotic. He fought to stay on the alert, but despite his best efforts he drifted.
The pre-race aerobatic show was on. Dave squinted into glaring sky. The plane was a dark blotch against the horizon, the props’ thunder just a hum in the distance.
Uncle Verle clapped a hand on his shoulder. “That’s Jimmy Doolittle himself, son. You know what...”
Verle’s explanation faded off. The plane made a graceful arc into the air, then shot toward them in a barrel roll, red wingtips clearing the pavement by mere feet. She exited upside down, silver belly bared to the sky, then curved up into a big slow loop-de-loop.
Uncle Verle grabbed his cane and rose from his seat, his face aglow. “Outside roll! Doolittle’s trademark move. Take that, Huns!”
The plane’s wings sprouted long white feathers. They began a slow beat against the air, pulling her into the heavens.
“She’s off and away!” Uncle Verle’s fist thudded into Dave’s shoulder—
He jerked awake to find himself cuffed to a seat on a Japanese plane bouncing through a stretch of turbulence. All those dreams of aviation glory lay in tatters, and he had to hope his legendary commanding officer was in Chungking by now, carrying on the war without him.
His depression was beyond anything he could put words to.
The blindfold still limited his vision to a thread of light. He maneuvered to get a thin strip of view out the window. Scattered cumulus clouds revealed an undulating emerald-colored landscape, furred with forest. And then—a mountain. A broad cone with a snow cap and an indentation at the top.
Unmistakable. Mount Fuji.
Japan.
A few minutes later, they banked over a sprawling city that kept a chokehold on a broad expanse of gray bay. He knew it from the maps he’d studied on Hornet. Tokyo.
When it came to interrogation, it seemed he’d left the minor leagues.
Chapter Fifteen
Monday, December 27, 1948
Osaka, Japan
Sleep spread wings of blessed forgetfulness over Miyako. She closed her eyes and let it take her.
She woke to raucous laughter down the hall. To her relief, daylight still filtered through the shoji.
Papa-san. She sat up cautiously. She hurt all over, but her head had stopped spinning. And there was so much she needed to do outside the Oasis’ walls. Tend to Papa-san in the hospital. See Kamura-san about money for the poison. Find a way to get some kind of explanation to George-san, without letting him get a glimpse of her. She had duties to attend to.
She should still have that packet of Papa-san’s tea in—
My handbag. She hadn’t seen it here. Oda’s men must have taken it. She fought a sense of futility that threatened to wash her under. She had nothing left of worth. She was nothing of worth. She coiled her hands in her lap and took a deep breath, fighting the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.
Imai-san or not. Tea or not. She had to go see Papa-san. Make herself useful to someone.
A set of knuckles rapped the shoji. A voice she didn’t recognize called in a greeting. A woman’s voice, but gravelly.
Miyako sat up. “Please come in.”
The shoji slid aside and a stout older woman entered. Miyako stood and bowed. The woman returned her bow, showcasing gray hair tucked in an immaculate bun.
“Konnichiwa. My name is Yamada. I help Imai-san here. I thought I should introduce myself.”
“Arigato. Excuse me. It’s hard to talk.”
“That’s not a problem, Ishikawa-san.”
“Please. You might as well call me Midori.” Since it seems I’m a fixture here—whether I like it or not.
Yamada-san gave her a crisp nod and a slight smile. “Very well, Midori-chan. There are some details I like to go over with new girls, but since you’re not working yet, there’s no rush for most of them. However”—her eyes took on a shrewd glint—“I overheard your conversation with Imai-san and I felt compelled to share one piece of advice. Of course you want to see your father. But as Imai-san has informed you, you can’t leave without her permission.”
“Hai. I heard her.”
“Good. Then let me caution you to do us all a favor. Don’t try to sneak out. Imai-san will catch you. And when she does”—her voice sank to something that was almost a growl— “trust me, your life won’t be worth living.” Yamada-san fixed her with a stony glare. “Believe me on this. When it comes to potential profits, you don’t mess with Imai-san.”
A tremor ran up Miyako’s spine. At her first brothel, they’d kept a room specifically to “correct” girls who lost their enthusiasm for the work. She’d only had to experience it once.
Yamada-san patted her shoulder. “Now, now.” The lizard skin around her eyes slackened. “All in all, you could do worse than Imai-san. She’s kind enough as long as you don’t cross her.”
Miyako gave a deliberate shiver. Maybe looking pitiful would count for something. “She mentioned associates. The yakuza?”
Yamada-san issued a dry chuckle. “She pays those goons for protection, all right. Not that it’s entirely her choice.”
“Which yakuza gang? Sakaume?”
Yamada-san gave her an ominous loo
k beneath knit brows. “No. Morimoto.”
“Ah.” This was mixed news. The Morimoto gang was ruthless. Kodo-san in the Abeno had crossed them, and they’d put him through one of his own shop’s plate-glass windows.
But it would have been worse for her if it had been the Sakaume gang. She could hardly rely on Tsunada-san for poison if his gang had an interest in the Oasis. Her collateral at the Oasis was her body. The loan goons couldn’t know she was putting that collateral at risk.
Yamada-san was saying something. “Consider yourself warned, Midori-chan.”
“Arigato, Yamada-san. I will.”
Miyako reflected on Yamada-san’s little speech, and it had the opposite effect the lady probably intended. A hint of suspicion prickled her. Perhaps Yamada-san had cautioned her so strongly because there actually was an easy way to gain her freedom.
Her room had a window, screened by a shoji on the inside and a carved grating on the outside. She supposed there was a small chance the grating might be loose, or she could snap some delicate feature of the woodwork free.
She pushed herself to her feet, stood on her futon, and thrust the shoji aside. That moved easily, but the grating was another matter. She heaved at it, pulled on it, but no luck.
This thing would keep a sumo champion hostage.
She wilted to the futon, breathless. No possibility of escaping that way.
If this brothel was like the one she’d worked in right after the war, there’d be a lounge toward the building’s front for mingling with clients, a lounge for the girls, and a kitchen at the back of the building. There might be some opportunity to escape from one of those spaces—some detail Imai-san had missed.
The Plum Blooms in Winter Page 14
