December 6

by Martin Cruz Smith

  “You’re kidding,” Harry said. “You’re drunk.”

  “No.” And he wasn’t, Harry realized. Gen was sober. “I have a friend inside. You’d enjoy him.”

  “At a geisha party?”

  “No geishas. He wants to play cards.”

  “There are games all over town.”

  “He’s very private. You’d enjoy him. Just meet him, and if you’re not interested, you can leave. Five minutes, Harry.”

  From the willow-house gate, a path of stones led across a lawn of moss to an entryway of polished cedar. Sure enough, Harry and Gen had barely left their shoes when, from behind paper panels slid shut, they heard the unmistakable sound of parties in progress: drunken toasts, the stumbling over musical pillows (a version of musical chairs) and the puns and feeble double entendres that passed for jokes. Rich drunks and simpering dolls, that was a geisha party so far as Harry was concerned. The cultural aspect fit into a thimble. The level of entertainment was prehistoric. One girl might sing like a lark, and the next one’s major talent might be tying a cherry stem with her tongue. The proprietor, hunchbacked from bowing, always greeted a customer at the front door. For once he was absent.

  Gen led Harry to the room farthest from the street, traditionally the best and quietest accommodation. It was a room Harry sometimes escaped to from the Paris; in turn, he gave geishas a ride home when they were too tipsy to walk. A round window looked out on a softly illuminated garden of bonsai and ferns. A standing screen was decorated with gilded carp swimming across blue silk. There were no geishas now, however, only a short man in a threadbare kimono shuffling cards. He had a deeply lined, tanned and compact body, as if any more weight was baggage. His gray hair was shaved to the nub, and he was missing the middle and index fingers of his left hand. He didn’t rise to greet Harry or pretend to bow but seemed amiable and informal enough.

  “I hear you play,” he told Harry.

  “Deal them.”

  The man dealt the cards facedown for five-card stud, and they played one on one with a one-yen ante just to make it interesting. The man was good; he had discipline, card memory, a sense of the changing odds, a natural poker face and, most important, an amused detachment that allowed him to take the loss or win of a hand as just deserts. It took until two in the morning for Harry to clean him out.

  “You see, this is what I mean,” the man told Gen as Harry raked in the final pot. “You can start by putting in just one yen or one ship or one soldier and still lose everything if you don’t know when to leave the table. Leaving the table is not something Japanese are very good at.” He held up his hands for Harry. “Sometimes you even have to leave fingers on the table. I lost two fingers when my own gun blew up. But the geishas here are very nice. The usual charge for a manicure from a geisha is one yen. For me, just eighty sen.”

  “Who were you shooting at?”

  “Russians. It was war, it was perfectly legal.”

  The songs and laughs from other rooms had died and disappeared. Quiet descended on the willow house. Gen had watched the entire poker game without saying a word or even stirring except to empty an ashtray or fetch tea. Everything the older man did, Gen followed with the attention and respect of an altar boy. “I am a terrible customer for geishas,” the man said. “I don’t drink, and I don’t have much to spend, but the geishas humor me nonetheless. I find the back room here restful.” He rubbed his head with embarrassment. “I tried to go home tonight, the first time I’ve been home in months, and I was locked out. My wife had taken the children on vacation, I suppose. So I came here with my loose change and some cards to make my fortune. Unfortunately, I ran into you, and now I have nothing at all.”

  “I warned you,” Gen said.

  “You were right. I will listen to my junior officers in the future.” The man returned to Harry. “Where did I go wrong?”

  “Nowhere special. You just didn’t have enough money, so you let me buy two pots, and then you had to be too aggressive. Then the losses snowballed.”

  “That’s so true! You know, there were times when I seriously thought of leaving the sea and becoming a full-time gambler. Not cards. Roulette. I had a very encouraging experience once at Monte Carlo. Also I like dice.”

  “We could try that.” Harry fished a pair from his jacket.

  “Oh, I don’t I think I should play with someone who carries dice just in case.”

  “I extend credit.”

  “Even more dangerous. Lieutenant, your friend is as good as advertised.” The man rubbed his hands together. “Excellent!”

  From his corner, Gen beamed with pride.

  “Do you have a system?” the man asked Harry.

  “No, I let the other man have a system, and I try to figure it out.”

  “You bet on anything?”

  “Cards, cars, dogs, horses, pigeons, about anything.”

  “The lieutenant told me about the car race at Tamagawa.”

  Tamagawa was a track on the way to Yokohama.

  “They have good races,” Harry said. “Bentleys, Bugattis, Mercedeses.”

  “Is it true that you entered a car with an airplane engine?”

  “A Curtis thirteen-cylinder engine.”

  “It stayed on the ground?”

  “Barely, but it won.”

  “That’s what matters. I wish I could have seen that.”

  Gen said, “Some of the other competitors were upset.”

  “Too bad,” the man said. “The losing side is always upset.” He returned to Harry. “But you are also a businessman with an interest in oil.”

  “I help the government develop sources of oil,” Harry said.

  “From…?”

  “Shale, mostly, but also looking at alternative sources.”

  “What does that mean?”

  There was something about the man that suggested bullshit wouldn’t do. “Pine trees.”

  The man grinned in wonder. “As a boy, I understand, you sold cat skins. I suppose you will be squeezing them for oil, too.”

  “Let’s say Japan doesn’t have the usual sources of oil.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.” The man’s smile folded. “I used to drink, a little. Then I encountered the most sobering sight in my life. It was a Texas oil field. Oil rigs as far as you could see in any direction. One Texas oil field that outproduced all of Japan. I visited assembly lines in Detroit and skyscrapers in New York City, but the last thing I see when I close my eyes at night is that oil field. Whenever I mention oil, the army says not to worry because we Japanese have Yamato spirit. Yamato spirit, Yamato spirit, that’s all the army knows. They say Japan is so different, so superior, we will necessarily win. You know, I have seen the cherry trees in Washington, and they are just as beautiful. The army talks about the incomparable Japanese character. Well, you can tell a lot about character and intelligence by how a man approaches a woman. A Japanese goes up to a woman and demands, ‘Give me a lay.’ Even a prostitute would say no. An American shows up with flowers and presents and gets what he wants. So much for moral superiority, and so much for results. The army can have Yamato spirit, give me oil.”

  The man spoke with such intensity that it took Harry a moment to find the air to answer. “I can’t get you Texas.”

  “No, I understand, but it seems to me that you have exactly the sort of skeptical eye and varied experience we need for a certain situation. You are unique. The lieutenant was right, you are just the man.”

  Harry didn’t know how flattered to be. “For what?”

  “Do you do card tricks?”

  “I just play cards, I’m not a magician.”

  “You know magicians?”

  “Dozens. Magicians with doves, rabbits, scarves, saws, feats of mental telepathy, whatever you want.”

  “Are you free tomorrow night?”

  “For a magic show?”

  The man developed a smile. “That’s the problem, we don’t know quite what it is. It’s magic or a miracle. I’
m hoping you will tell us.”

  A NAVY CAR with an anchor insignia picked Harry up at the Paris the following night. Gen was inside behind window curtains. He wore navy blues, and his easygoing manner of the previous evening was replaced by a somber mood.

  “Where’s our friend with the cards?” Harry asked.

  “He’ll be there. No names,” Gen warned Harry.

  “Whatever you say.”

  It didn’t matter. Harry knew the player’s name. Anyone who read a newspaper or saw newsreels knew the dour face and blunt manner of the commander in chief of the Combined Fleet. Although no names had been exchanged, Harry had recognized Yamamoto as soon as the admiral shuffled the deck of cards with the famous eight fingers instead of ten. Harry also understood that the meeting had been engineered for invisibility, at midnight in the back room of a willow house with no witnesses but the loyal acolyte Gen. Could Harry claim that he had even been introduced to Yamamoto? No. That was okay. A lot of people didn’t want to be associated with Harry.

  Gen said, “This is a very sensitive situation.”

  “You mean your career is on the line. Magic or miracle, what is that supposed to mean? The Great Man has looked me over and approved, but I’m still kept in the dark. Give me a clue.”

  “You have to see it to believe it.”

  “That’s a good clue. Are we talking about the resurrection? Water to wine? A burning bush?”

  “On a par.”

  “On a par? Wow. Like parting the sea and just marching where you want to go?”

  “Sort of. This is very big, but…” Gen lowered his voice. “But there is also a risk of embarrassment.”

  “Losing face?”

  “Not face. Enormous, disastrous embarrassment.”

  That sounded intriguing to Harry, but Gen shook his head to indicate the end of the conversation. South of the palace, the driver swung into an alley behind the Navy Ministry and stopped. Gen studied the shadows, then rushed Harry out of the car and down a flight of stairs as if delivering a prostitute. Inside, they followed a trail of dusty lights through a tunnel of steam and water pipes to a door that admitted them to a basement hall of office doors. Harry wondered who would be working at one in the morning. Someone was, judging by the sound of voices and haze of light down the hall. Gen went almost on tiptoe and, when they were nearly on top of the voices, slipped Harry though a door into what was more a tight space than a proper room, a catchall crammed with scales, sterilizing trays, bedpans. At eye level was an inset pane of glass.

  Gen whispered, “On the other side, it’s a mirror. This used to be a medical clinic where we examined pilots. Sometimes that demanded discreet observation.”

  Harry observed a room dominated by a metal table supporting a tank of water about eight feet wide and four feet high, a good-size aquarium that contained, instead of sand and fish, six bottles of blue glass. Each bottle was sealed and connected via an overhead electrical line to a battery big enough for a submarine. It had to be like moving a piano to get it in. V-shaped wands wrapped in copper wire stood around the tank, and over it hung a copper sphere. A small but impressive audience had been gathered: four navy officers, no grade less than a commander, and two unhappy civilians. Harry noticed a couple of petty officers with pistols standing at the door. He also saw Yamamoto, with so many rings around his sleeves they looked as if he had dipped his cuffs in gold. The uniform seemed to weigh on him, and his attention, like everyone else’s, was anxiously focused on a gaunt man in a white lab coat jotting numbers from a bank of gauges individually wired to the copper wands. Welder’s goggles hung around everyone’s neck. By Harry’s watch, five minutes elapsed before the man in the lab coat raised his head and declared. “Progress, definite progress.”

  “Progress in what?” Harry asked Gen. “What is he doing?”

  Gen couldn’t get the words out right away. “He’s making oil.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s turning water into oil.”

  Harry actually took a step back. He wasn’t dazzled by much, but this was blinding. “Water into oil?”

  “You can smile, but I’ve seen him do it.”

  “I don’t think even God tried that. Water and wine, yes; oil, no. You realize it’s impossible.”

  “Opinion is divided,” Gen granted. “The program is secret.”

  “I bet. What’s the researcher’s name?”

  “Ito. Dr. Ito.”

  While Ito adjusted controls, Gen explained what the doctor had explained to him, that the table of the elements was neither fixed nor limited and that through “electric remapping,” their atomic bonds could be broken and recombined. Ito was in the middle of mapping the transitional states of elements and, in recognition of the national need, had diverted his talents and discoveries toward the transformation of water into oil. From their faces, Harry saw who in the room bought it. At least one civilian was visibly suppressing professional outrage, but there were hopefuls and believers among the navy. And it wasn’t a bad show. Ito was dramatically thin, with lank hair overhanging a pale forehead and eyes hollow from lack of sleep. His coat was dirty, his hands filthy; everything about him spelled genius. He worked on the run in rubber overshoes, resetting dials, repositioning the copper wands, stopping only to cough in a tubercular way. In a hoarse voice, he said, “Perhaps that’s all for tonight.”

  Yamamoto said, “Doctor, would you please try one more time? It’s so important.”

  Ito seemed to gather inner strength. “One more.”

  He pulled on rubber gauntlets as he moved to an oversize switch. At his lead, everyone in the room pulled on goggles with smoked lenses, and Ito seemed to wait until the entire room had stopped breathing. Harry thought that only an audience brought up on Kabuki’s overheated posing would swallow Ito for a minute.

  “Take your positions.”

  There was a general shuffling onto a rubber mat. Before Harry figured out what that was about, Ito slapped the switch handle down and the tank water turned a vivid blue. As Ito turned up the voltage, white bolts of electricity ran up the two arms of the wands, flickered back and forth, joined hands from wand to wand, then arced the tank and shot up to the overhead sphere so that tank and table were domed by an electrical jellyfish that sizzled and popped and smelled of singed wool. Gen and Harry threw up their arms to shade their eyes from light that flooded the cubicle they were in. Ito cranked a transformer, and the protoplasm threatened to spread tentacles and float from the table. It was a view of the forces of the universe, an electrical cauldron, a glimpse of Creation itself. Waves rolled on an oscilloscope screen. Ito circled the tank with a small neon tube that lit, faded, glowed again. His long hair stood on end and twisted and wrestled first toward one wand and then the other. Electricity lapped like fire up his arms, yet Ito moved with the assurance of a sorcerer. When he threw the switch off, Harry felt half blinded. Those who had been in the room with the tank looked as shaken as survivors of a lightning bolt.

  “Not bad,” Harry said. “Electrical arcs, sparks, everything but a hunchback running around with a bucket of brains.”

  Yamamoto stepped off the mat and approached the tank. He laid on his hands, minus the two fingers he’d lost pursuing Russians. Yamamoto again ready to risk all. As if his touch were a signal, a bottle stirred. It leaned, lifted clear and steadily rose to the surface, where Ito caught it, snipped its wire and set it by a rack of test tubes. Of course, Ito didn’t unstop the bottle himself.

  “Professor Mishima, you are such an eminent scientist. Would you do me the honor?”

  The smaller, rounder civilian huffed. “This is ridiculous, this is not science.”

  “Please,” Yamamoto said.

  Mishima broke the wax seal with a penknife and poured the contents into a tube, reserving a last drop to roll around his fingertip and taste.

  “What is it?” Ito asked as if they were the closest of colleagues.

  The professor wiped his mouth. “Oil.”

&n
bsp; “What was in the bottle originally?”

  “Water.”

  “Your conclusion?” Yamamoto asked.

  “It’s preposterous. You cannot change water to oil with a little lightning, or else the oceans would be oil.”

  Ito was unperturbed. “That is salt water. This is very different water.”

  “You cannot defy the laws of nature.”

  “We are rewriting the laws of nature.”

  “Impossible…” The professor tried, but he had lost, trumped by a card from his own hand.

  “Perhaps this is the Yamato spirit we have heard so much about,” Yamamoto said. “But, Dr. Ito, only one bottle out of six seems to have changed.”

  “Yes, we need more research.”

  The doctor went out of Harry’s range of vision for a minute and returned with a new bottle of water. With great scruple, he turned his back while a vice admiral wrote on a cork. Then Ito took the cork back, immediately stopped the bottle and lit a sealing candle, the flame a tiny footlight to his face while he turned the bottle to catch the dropping wax.

  “We need production,” Yamamoto said.

  “First research.”

  “With a deadline,” the admiral insisted.

  Ito excused himself to cough, and Harry saw the spots of red bloom in the doctor’s handkerchief. Ito was sickly enough to begin with, and all at once he seemed exhausted, as if the lightning had been drawn from his own being. A chair was found for him to sit on, while coughs racked his body. Yamamoto was forced to relent, but he raised his eyes directly toward the glass that Harry watched through.

  “What do you think?” asked Gen.

  “Wonderful,” Harry said. “Lightning bolts, levitation, transmigration. I loved it.”

  GEN BROUGHT DIAGRAMS to the Happy Paris at noon the following day. Michiko sorted records and watched sullenly, like a cat jealous of attention.

  “You and Harry went with geishas again last night?” she asked Gen.