December 6 (V5.0)

by Martin Cruz Smith

  “I’ve never asked for their protection.” He had always been proud of his independence.

  Michiko said, “If you wait here, you’re dead.”

  She’d put her finger on it. War was God’s way of overturning the card game. Even Harry was outraged.

  “Maybe the war will be over quickly,” she said.

  “After an attack like this? It had to be a surprise to work, and if it was a surprise, it will be a fight to the death.”

  “Why are you on the Americans’ side?”

  Harry watched a boy run by with an open umbrella of oiled paper and lacquered spokes. The boy spun the umbrella so that warplanes painted on the paper chased one another. It was a handsome umbrella, much like the planes themselves.

  “Because they’ll win.”

  EACH RADIO REPORT began with the opening bars of the “Warship March,” and with every account, Tokyo seemed to rise farther above sea level. Sun flags festooned streetcars, framed shop-windows, waved in hands. The air turned intoxicating. Eyes grew brighter and faces flushed with pride as loudspeakers broadcast news of an astonishing raid on Hawaii and the sinking of the entire American Battleship Row, as if history’s menacing giant had been slain with a single righteous blow. Paced by a military beat that poured from the radio, the entire city seemed in motion, becoming the new center of the world.

  Harry left the apartment first, in case the colonel was still lurking. He wore a dark suit and fedora with a germ mask over his face, like any midlevel salaryman afflicted with a head cold but duty-bound to go to work. Michiko emerged minutes later in a beret, knitted cashmere coat and bright red lips, like a smart little sailboat challenging a squall. Her pace was quick enough so that by the time he reached the subway station, Michiko was only twenty feet behind. The throngs were themselves some protection— there was a giddy milling among the turnstiles. Just in case Ishigami did appear, Harry had tucked a boning knife wrapped in cloth into his waistband. Michiko carried the gun in a handbag, ready to plug a colonel of the Imperial Army in the middle of a station. Altogether, Harry thought, one hell of a girl. Loudspeakers advised all troops to return to their regiments, though Harry believed that Ishigami was no longer strictly responding to orders. The clumsy blows on Haruko, for example, suggested a deterioration of the colonel’s usually immaculate style. On the other hand, Michiko’s likening the suddenness of the attack to a hawk and mouse sounded right.

  Although rhythmic clapping broke out on the train, Harry feigned drowsiness on the short ride to Tokyo Station rather than show his eyes. There the entire country seemed to pour out the station doors. Harry and Michiko were swept along by crowds to the plaza that faced the imperial palace, where thousands silently knelt along the moat. Men removed their hats, women set down their red-stitched scarves and trusted their prayers to a morning wind just as, not too many hours before, in the mid-Pacific, their sons had stood on the decks of aircraft carriers and launched their planes into the wind of the new day. Half of Harry wanted to rail at what a gimmick the emperor was, a nobody for a thousand years, just a mantelpiece curio; the other half had to bow to not only the beauty of the con but its beauty, period, the sweeping rampart of the walls and brocade of golden trees, perfect as both a screen and royal throne under a dome of blue. No imperial figure appeared on the battlements or bridge. No cannonade hastened the drop of a single leaf. Serenity, more than anything, was the mark of a demigod. A troop of Hitler Youth arrived in shorts and caps only to have their “Sieg Heil!” brushed aside. Responding to shadows on the moat, carp rose and tinged the green murk gold, reminding Harry of the tael bars he had wasted.

  Harry pointed out the Datsun parked at the south end of the station, but Michiko wanted to walk.

  “And be seen.” She was definite about that.

  MOUNTED POLICE blocked the gate of the American embassy as if they’d trapped the Dillinger gang, which seemed, to Harry, to be going overboard, especially since down the street they’d left the embassy garage unguarded. He situated Michiko at a French café on the corner while he went through the garage door.

  He pulled off his mask. The embassy he had known as a boy had been destroyed by earthquake, and a new residency of white stucco and black eaves stood at the top of a long compound landscaped with fountains and arbors like a college campus. However, the activity around them this morning suggested an anthill half kicked in. Attachés and secretaries huffed from building to building under the weight of cartons. All these Americans he had never seen before. Amazing. Moving was never easy, Harry thought, especially under the pressure of a declaration of war, and he was happy to help a clerk pick up folders she had dropped. She said that Roy Hooper was with the ambassador, which Harry took as invitation enough to wander into the official residency. No one seemed to be home. Harry was impressed by the bronzed doors, central hall and grand staircase of polished teak, a ballroom with a movie projector and screen, salon with piano, walnut-paneled smoking room, separate banquet hall empty except for a card table with an unfinished jigsaw puzzle of cowboys and Indians. The ambassador’s own desk sat on a Turkish carpet and held a silver-framed photo of Bobby Jones and a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt signed “With admiration and warmest regards to Good Old Joe from Frank.” The window looked down on the front driveway, where the ambassador and a pair of aides seemed to be effectively stalling Japanese diplomats in top hats while document destruction went on. No Hooper.

  The chancery, down the hill, was the center of mayhem, where staff spilled as many files as they carried down the stairwells. Harry found Hooper’s office, a room with woodblock prints of Tokyo. Again no Hooper, but Harry shut the door behind himself.

  The office safe was wide open and empty, but what he was after wasn’t particularly secret. The desk drawers that opened easily were stuffed with economic analyses and clippings from Japanese magazines and journals. He forced a locked drawer by hammering in a letter opener with his flask and found what he was after, a master list of American citizens residing in Japan: Foreign Service officers and staff, businessmen and agents, teachers and instructors, medical doctors and nurses, missionaries, military on liaison duty, foreign correspondents, American employees of either non-Japanese or Japanese companies, sailors or ships’ officers, Japanese wives of Americans, women and children, invalids or anyone requiring medical care, a list for every category, hundreds of names in all. “Harry Niles” was entered vaguely under “Self-employed.” A second list was of Americans for whom the embassy would request repatriation or safe internment. It was identical to the master list except for one name crossed out, Harry’s.

  The smell of smoke insinuated itself into the office. Harry joined the traffic on the stairwell and asked, “Where’s Hooper?”

  A man negotiating a carton around a corner asked, “Who are you?”

  Harry began to tip the carton. “Where?”

  “Jesus, fellow. Below, in the code room.”

  Harry pushed ahead to the basement and followed the smoke to an open door where Hooper directed a bucket brigade. Inside the room, desks had been pushed aside to make space for iron-wire wastebaskets set on metal chairs. Files and codes had been stuffed into the baskets and set on fire, flames wrestling like torches and spewing smoke that collected under the ceiling and snowed black confetti. A nervous circle of diplomats stood ready with their pails.

  “Was I right?” Harry asked.

  Hooper almost dropped his pail from surprise. “Get out. You’re the last person who should be here.”

  “Was I right about the attack? Did you ever tell the ambassador? I saw him trying to repel boarders. A little late.”

  “He did everything he could. You have no idea of the efforts he made.”

  “On the golf course?”

  “Look, this is a top-secret area.”

  “Was. It’s a firetrap now.” Harry peered in. The staff that wasn’t feeding the baskets were dismantling what looked like hooded, oversized typewriters.

  “This is secret materia
l, and you, Harry, are the most notorious collaborator in Japan.”

  “First, how could I collaborate, when we haven’t been at war until today? Second, I warned you about the attack on Pearl.”

  “That just proves it, in the eyes of some people.”

  “So you did tell someone.”

  “I passed it on to the experts.”

  “Who ignored it.”

  “Harry, we’ve been getting ten warnings a day.”

  “But this was from me. You knew me, Hoop. You knew it was the real deal, and you let it sit.”

  “Harry, I don’t have time to argue.”

  “I don’t warn you, I lose. I warn you, I lose. What kind of game is that?”

  “It’s not a game. We weighed your information with all the rest. We treated you like anyone else.”

  “Bullshit. I’m not on the list, Hoop. I’m the only American in Japan who’s not on the list for repatriation.”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  Harry pulled out the list. “From your office.”

  “That’s a preliminary—”

  “Don’t lie to me. I always tell you, ‘The Lord hates a lying tongue.’ Don’t do it.”

  “People do feel that you have associated too closely with the Japanese. Maybe even switched allegiance. There are all the scandals and shady activities you’ve been involved in. The fact is, for a lot of people, you’re not the kind of citizen we necessarily want back.”

  “Suddenly you have standards? George Washington had slaves. Look around, not a slave on me.”

  “I get it. But, just for your information, I did have your name down on the original list for repatriation.”

  “Who took it off? The ambassador? The British leaned on you? Was it Beechum?”

  “You should have left Beechum’s wife alone. It’s a small community.”

  “Beechum, then? How can you let a hairless limey run American-Japanese affairs?”

  “That’s the funny part. It wasn’t the British and it wasn’t us. It was the Japanese. I’m sorry. No negotiations, they want you right here.”

  The smoke thickened and lowered. Pages that floated half aflame were doused with water. Harry took a step back, not from the heat of the wastebasket but from the staggering flush of his own error. The Japanese? The Japanese had taken away first the plane and now the boat. There weren’t many other ways off an island.

  Hooper asked, “What did you do, Harry? You did something they want to hold you for. How did you know about the attack, really? Because you were absolutely right.” As the baskets turned to bonfires, staff threw precautionary dashes of water. Hooper smiled at the scene. “Remember being kids the first time we were here? The fireworks, the fireflies? Lord, we had fun. I always wondered why the Japanese didn’t kick you out. Now I wonder why they won’t let you go. Got a cigarette?” Harry tapped out a couple and gave one to Hooper, who spit loose tobacco toward the fire and gazed at the flames. “Remember, you once bet me five dollars you could get a fish in and out of a sake bottle without breaking the glass, then you switched the fish with an eel. In and out, slick as butter. The high cost of education, you said.” He pulled Harry close enough to whisper. “I used that trick the whole summer. Made fifty dollars. Thought my old man would have a stroke.”

  In and out like an eel in a bottle? Not a bad trick, Harry thought. He wished he could do it now.

  “I’ll miss you, Harry,” Hooper said.

  “See you, Hoop.”

  Which wasn’t likely, both men knew.

  Hooper went back to the delicate task of incinerating papers in a closed room, but he got inspired before Harry cleared the door. “The reason they want you is that you screwed them, didn’t you? Somehow you screwed them.”

  HARRY GATHERED MICHIKO at the café, and they walked back toward the car, a stylish couple on a sunny day, ignoring the constant bombardment of military music from loudspeakers.

  “So, I’m set,” he said. “They figure one month, two at the most, and they’ll ship us home on the President Cleveland. They’ll put me in steerage, but I’ll start a card game and make a fortune. Serve them right. What about you? I’ll get back here as soon as I can, but you’ll want to do something in the meantime.”

  “During the war?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Don’t you think it will be over soon?”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  She edged infinitesimally closer, tantamount to touching. “I’ll wait.”

  “But what will you do?”

  “That is inconsequential. I’ll be here.”

  They walked for a while.

  “Okay.”

  The street was like Park Avenue, with plane trees and canopies and people with little dogs, so Harry was unprepared for a fracas as the American manager of First National City was hustled out of his apartment house and into a car full of military police in plainclothes. He waved and shouted, “Hey, Harry, stand me a drink now?” The attention of the Kempeitai turned to Harry. Of the different arms of the law a person could be seized by, the Kempeitai were the worst. The officer in charge had a face that was creased down the middle with the sides slightly mismatched.

  “Identity papers? American? We’re taking in all Americans.”

  “You may want to radio in my name.”

  “Why would I bother?”

  “You may.”

  The officer pressed Harry against the marble facing of the building. He riffled through Harry’s papers, then again, and took them to the radio operator in the car. It wasn’t the big punch you saw coming that hurt you, Harry thought, but the little punch you didn’t see. The officer returned and nodded toward the sound of the loudspeaker.

  “There’ll be more news soon.”

  “I’m sure there will be.”

  The officer included Michiko in his study. “You like Japanese women?”

  “Yes,” said Harry.

  “And you like gaijin?”

  “Yes,” Michiko said.

  The officer told Harry, “Get on your knees.”

  “My knees?”

  “That’s right.”

  Before Harry could move, the music in the loudspeakers died. Harry felt the street and all of Tokyo go quiet to take in the vigorous, raspy voice of General Tojo speaking from headquarters. Tojo was one of the Kempeitai’s own, and they came to attention for the general’s sharp, explosive Japanese. Well, give them credit, Harry thought. Less than a century before, they didn’t have a steamship, railroad or rifle to their name. They were a quaint little people who shuffled around in silk robes and sipped tea. “MonkeyIsland,” the Chinese called Japan, because it imitated China. Until the Japanese imitated the Prussian army and Royal Navy, humiliated China and sank the Russian fleet, and, now, with bright Yamato spirit, were taking on both the British and American empires in one go.

  “I am resolved,” Tojo said, “to dedicate myself, body and soul, to the country, and to set at ease the august mind of our sovereign. And I believe that every one of you, my fellow countrymen, will not care for your life but gladly share in the honor to make of yourself His Majesty’s humble shield. The key to victory lies in a ‘faith in victory.’ For twenty-six hundred years since it was founded, our empire has never known defeat. This record alone is enough to produce a conviction in our ability to crush any enemy no matter how strong.”

  An announcer followed with more news of annihilating blows delivered to the enemy and victories unprecedented in human history, the Battle of Trafalgar and Little Big Horn rolled up in one, but lacking details of how many battleships, cruisers or aircraft carriers were hit, let alone docks or depots.

  The officer had not forgotten Harry. In fact, the speech had fired him with more pugnacity. “Get on your knees! Both get on your knees. You have soiled this sacred day.”

  Harry said, “Excuse me, the lady—”

  “She is not a lady, she is a whore. Your knees!”

  “No,” Michiko said.

  She was
calmly going for the gun in her bag when the officer was interrupted and called to his car. He sat for a radio conversation that he contributed nothing to, and a minute later he returned with Harry’s papers and half his face red.

  “You can go. Take the woman and leave.”

  Harry said, “Thank you.”

  The banker laughed. He had been watching the whole scene through an open car door. “It still works, I don’t believe it. The Niles luck.”

  Harry and Michiko did as the Kempeitai officer suggested. Harry’s legs operated stiffly, while Michiko was smooth enough for two.

  Harry said, “Connected and protected, even now.” All the same, he slipped on his germ mask. He didn’t feel quite that connected or protected. Shozo and Ishigami had let Harry walk, and now the Kempeitai?

  When he was a kid working his way across California, Harry once worked at a slaughterhouse, prodding cattle with a long pole as they went through a chute toward the kill room. He had to keep the steers moving so they wouldn’t kick one another, get tangled on fence boards or otherwise make a fuss. Part of his job was to spot any animal that looked particularly diseased and move it into a side chute so that it could be killed separately. That was how Harry felt now. Not connected or protected but shunted aside.

  WAR TRANSFORMED THE CITY. Flags grew like flowers. Shopgirls and office boys, lured by the din of loudspeakers, ran after a fire engine bringing a fireman to the station for military service. His engine mates carried poles with long fringes that they twirled like lion heads on pikes to the beat of clappers, while the draftee rode on top, cheeks red from sake and the honor. And the radios sang,

  You and I are cherry blossoms,

  Having bloomed, we’ve resolved to die

  But we will meet again at Yasukuni,

  Blooming on the same treetop.

  Harry felt the thinness of his disguise. Michiko, on the other hand, took the low winter light and glowed. The beret lazed against her hair. Her stride made the loose cashmere slide along her legs. Despite the excitement of the fire engine, the clamor of the loudspeakers and the lines at the newspaper stands, people noticed Michiko and gave way. To make sure no one missed who was with her, she took possession of Harry’s arm. She seemed so radiant that he hated to point out how dangerous her run-in with the Kempeitai had almost been. Not just dangerous but suicidal.