The Emperor's General

by James Webb

  “Are you interested?” asked Thomas.

  And why not? MacArthur had planted a powerful and accurate seed of uncertainty about working for the Ramirez family in Manila, no matter what happened between Divina Clara and myself. “I’d, uh—I’d be happy to talk with you about it, sir.”

  “Do you have a card?” asked Thomas.

  “Jay is being posted back to Manila for an exceptionally important assignment,” interrupted MacArthur. “He’ll be there for a few months. I will make sure you know how to reach him.”

  “I’m planning to be in Manila soon, anyway,” said Thomas. He shook my hand again. “I’ll give you a call!”

  “That would be fine, sir.”

  “Excellent!” said this mysteriously kind and elegant man.

  I was sky-high as I walked out of the supreme commander’s office. I even managed to ignore the secret smirk on Court Whitney’s face as I closed the door behind me. Making my way down the darkened corridor past rooms where an ever-increasing preponderance of strangers from Washington now toiled at peacetime tasks, it did not even bother me that Douglas MacArthur had mousetrapped me three separate times in my naive attempt to ambush him once.

  I had not broken away clean, but neither had I totally lost. Compared to where the world had been only twenty-four hours before, I now had reason to be happy. Kido would be charged and sent to jail. I was still in the army, but I would have my time in Manila. True, I was surrendering my notes, swallowing back the bile of General Yamashita’s kangaroo court, and being lured into a position that might forever buy my silence.

  But I already knew that, thanks to the recommendation of General MacArthur, Thorpe Thomas was going to give me the chance to become a very rich, and even a very powerful, man.

  CHAPTER 25

  I had waited in the cold night air for half an hour, standing on the front steps of the Dai Ichi building, my eyes continually searching the faintly lit, heavily treed Imperial Palace grounds on the far side of the palace plaza. Here and there a light glowed from the Household Ministry buildings and the Outer Ceremonial Palace, but otherwise the grounds were black and devoid of motion. Kido had said ten-thirty, and usually he was irritatingly prompt. I checked my watch, huddling my shoulders against the frostbitten air. It was now nearly eleven. I paced along the steps, shoving my hands deep inside my pockets, and began to wonder if the lord privy seal had changed his mind.

  And then finally I saw the headlights. Two cars were slowly making their way along an inner road toward the nearby Cherry Field gate, their path twisting back and forth, negotiating moats and tree lines like mice inside a maze. My heart raced. Kido was coming. History was being made, propelled into action by my own cunning. I walked quickly across the street toward the gate. In one of those delicious little ironies that seemed only to happen with Kido, he had asked me to be his personal escort when he gave himself up to the American authorities.

  At the gate the two cars stopped. Nearing them I could see that the emperor had again offered up his personal plum-colored Daimlers for our short journey. Kido was going to prison in style, far more grandly than when MacArthur and his entourage had entered the country in the now-famous charcoal-burner convoy that took us from Atsugi to Yokohama. Kido was in the lead car, sitting in the back seat. Through the window I could see that he was as usual dressed quite elegantly, wearing the striped pants and cutaway coat that had been his normal working uniform. He waved to me, indicating that I should open the door and sit next to him.

  “We have plenty of time,” he said, declining to apologize for his tardiness as I climbed into the car. “Omori is not that far.” Even in the darkness his eyes burned into me. “But why did you say we should arrive at midnight, Captain Jay Marsh?”

  “Because MacArthur announced that you should turn yourself in today,” I answered. “And I thought you should have every minute that was available to you.”

  “Ah, so. An excellent gesture,” said Kido, as if he were somehow still in charge. “A good sign.” He looked back with undisguised longing at the palace grounds. The Daimler pulled smoothly onto the empty street, immediately picking up speed. “I very much appreciated the opportunity to say my farewells properly. And I’m sure the emperor was pleased as well.”

  “It is a noble thing that you are doing, Lord Privy Seal.”

  “I am no longer the lord privy seal, Captain Jay Marsh. You must now call me Marquis Koichi Kido.” He covered his obvious sadness with a sarcastic smile. I could tell that he had been drinking. “That is, until the supreme commander strips us all of our royal titles as well.”

  “I will always call you the lord privy seal.”

  “You may do that only if you wish to insult the emperor.”

  “I’m sorry, Marquis Koichi Kido,” I said pointedly. A part of me actually empathized with the enormity of his loss. “I have no wish to insult the emperor.”

  “No,” he said, looking out the window. “Not you, of all people. But anyway you are wrong to call my actions noble. Do you understand majime?”

  “Perhaps if I study for the rest of my life I will understand majime, Marquis Kido. For now I am too young and immature.”

  He twinkled with delight at my response. “Very good, Captain Jay Marsh. I am going to miss you.” He looked out the window again. “I have lived my life in service of the emperor. That has been my outer truth. My inner life must feel the same truth or I have no majime. And so I am happy to have volunteered to make this simple journey.”

  We rode silently for a while, staring out at dark, empty streets. I looked behind us. “Why do you have two cars, Marquis Kido?”

  “It was the emperor’s wish,” he said simply. His eyes went far away, and the pride of a recent memory washed over his face. “We had a long and comfortable meeting in his private study, talking about many things, from the time of the emperor’s childhood. I was his eldest Big Brother from the time he was very young, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “And then there was a wonderful dinner. Many friends from the—old days. Many stories. Ah, yes, there were great days in the past, Captain Jay Marsh! It is impossible to explain to you how complete my honor has been, to serve my emperor from the time of his childhood. And then Empress Nagako presented me with a most beautiful antique table on the occasion of my—departure. And a tray of doughnuts that she baked herself!”

  “You are indeed a lucky man—Marquis Koichi Kido.”

  The Daimler raced along the city streets, uninterrupted by traffic. Omori, which had once been a prisoner of war camp for Allied soldiers, was to our south and indeed not far away. After a few minutes Kido glanced carefully at me. “I must ask you a cultural question. My son-in-law is a graduate of Harvard and something of an expert on American ways. He has advised me that if I simply accept responsibility for the conduct of the war, the Americans will somehow believe that I am only protecting the emperor. But he says that if I claim I am not responsible for these things and wish to argue them at my trial, it will for some reason protect the emperor. I do not understand this logic. Is this true?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “It is possible, Lord Privy Seal.”

  “I told you, I am not the lord privy seal.”

  His stubborn adamance about his recently abandoned title seemed tragically humorous, even at this moment of humiliation. Despite myself I fought back a grin. “I am sorry, Marquis. But it is possible that your son-in-law is correct. If you readily admit that you are responsible, American minds might seek to pierce through your defenses, deciding that they were offered only as a cover-up for the emperor’s acts. But if you deny any responsibility at all, Americans might decide that there is no reason to look beyond you to the emperor, and that they should look in other places for the culprits.”

  “You have a very strange society,” Kido mused, looking out the window.

  “We believe an individual has the right to maintain his innocence until he is proven guilty,” I said. “It is very unu
sual for someone to turn himself in and admit his error.”

  Kido stared at me, suddenly bitter and bemused. “That encourages people to deny responsibility for their own actions,” he said.

  “But aren’t you taking responsibility for the emperor and his uncles, and not yourself?”

  “I told you all this already!” He was looking at me with great exasperation, as if I were a failed student. “The emperor has accepted responsibility on behalf of the entire nation. But it is impossible for the imperial family to violate the law. Any law. That is the reason your earlier advice to me was so sound.”

  “You must never tell the Americans that I gave you such advice, Marquis Koichi Kido. You must tell them only that you decided to turn yourself in after being charged by the supreme commander.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  “To protect the supreme commander,” I said.

  He peered deeply into my eyes, as if he were able to read the unspoken meaning in my words. I stared back, slowly smiling. At that moment we both knew the convoluted, hidden truth. And I also knew that Kido would never admit that I had tricked him into this perfect journey. He was comfortable with his sacrifice. It would indeed protect the emperor, and it would also free Prince Nashimoto. He had been given his farewell meal and his antique table and his tray of doughnuts. How could he now complain that his journey was set into motion by a young, scheming captain?

  “You are much smarter than I thought, Captain Jay Marsh.”

  “I was sent by the imperial ancestors, Marquis Koichi Kido, for the good of Japan. This was meant to happen.”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice going soft and vague. “You have been Japanese for two thousand years.” For some reason he smiled and stared back out the window. “I had always wondered. But now I know how you won this war.”

  Ahead of us the high, dark walls of the Omori Prison compound came slowly into view. A small entourage of American military officials had gathered at the main gate, awaiting Kido’s arrival. He saw them and began fidgeting nervously in his seat. Another, involuntary smile crept onto his face. I could tell that this time it was motivated by a sense of shame.

  “My captors await me.”

  “Yes,” I said. “They have been waiting for some time.”

  “You must take care of Yoshiko,” he said as we neared the gate.

  “How?” His comment startled me fully awake. I had not thought about her for days and had no idea what he meant.

  His eyes bore relentlessly into me. “She has—extended herself on your behalf, Captain Jay Marsh. She is a geisha but she has never been a prostitute. She is a delicate girl and as you know highly schooled. But now she will always be remembered as having been your—escort.”

  “Yes, but she was—introduced to me by you, was she not?”

  “Of course she was. In the restaurant that night I could see that you liked her. It was my honor. And hers. But now I am gone. Others might not look so kindly on her—service.”

  “Your culture is not like that,” I protested softly. “It protects the individual who is acting for the—greater good. She was seeing me with your full encouragement.”

  “My culture does not fully appreciate foreigners, Captain Jay Marsh. Or women who have made love to them.”

  “I am leaving in two days for Manila. I will be married there.”

  “But you do believe in obligations, do you not?”

  He smiled at me with a comfortable vindictiveness. Yoshiko had been my reward and now she had turned into his own little payback. He knew he was skewering me with my Western culture’s sense of guilt as he predicted Yoshiko’s Oriental shame.

  “What should I do?”

  “Take care of her.”

  “How?”

  He did not answer. The car slowed, then came to a halt. Near us, the group of military police and senior officers seemed to collectively stiffen all at once, waiting for Kido to exit the car. He touched me warmly on the shoulder, smiling with what I knew was a heartfelt sincerity.

  “It has been great fun, Captain Jay Marsh. I hope I will see you again once I am—free from this sacrifice.”

  “Yes it has, Lord Privy Seal.”

  “You must learn to stop saying that.”

  Behind us, four tuxedoed imperial chamberlains crawled quickly from the Daimler that had been following us. Now they gathered outside the car door on Kido’s side. One older man ceremonially reached out and opened the door. Then all four bowed deeply as Kido stepped from the car and faced the group that would take him into custody. I opened my own door and walked to the other side of the car, joining Kido as he moved toward the Americans.

  In the darkness I was surprised to see General Court Whitney among them. “Well, I’m glad he showed up,” said Whitney. “Prince Konoye wasn’t as cooperative.”

  “What’s the problem, General?”

  “He killed himself.”

  “The guy had style,” said a tall, acne-scarred colonel I did not recognize, stepping up next to Whitney. “He threw a big party last night at his villa, supposedly to celebrate his arrest. Everyone says he was the perfect host. Then after they left he slipped into his silk pajamas, swallowed down a dose of poison, and went to bed.”

  Behind us, the two Daimlers pulled slowly away, leaving Koichi Kido alone in the midst of his captors. He spoke quickly to me in Japanese. “I heard the general mention Konoye. Is he here yet?”

  “No,” I said to Kido in Japanese. “It seems that Prince Konoye is dead.”

  “Ah, so,” said the former lord privy seal, his face awash in a knowing sadness. “Majime again. Now do you understand? For more than two thousand years, his family has never betrayed the emperor. He had warned me that he would not testify.”

  “Time to bring the Big Boy inside,” interrupted the colonel, nodding toward Kido.

  Whitney handed me a piece of paper. “Konoye left a letter. We need to get it translated.”

  I stared at the kanji for a few seconds, then stopped the colonel as he neared Kido. “Give me a minute, Colonel.”

  I handed the letter to Kido. Both of us smiled knowingly. “As you know, I am terrible with kanji, Marquis Koichi Kido. But it would be useful to hear what the prince wished to say?”

  Kido bowed slightly, then brought the letter very close to his face, reading aloud it in the dark. “ ‘I have committed certain errors in handling state affairs since the outbreak of the China incident. I believe my real intentions are even now understood and appreciated by my friends, including not a few friends in America. But the winner is too boastful and the loser too servile. World public opinion, which is at present full of overexcitement, will in time recover a more normal calmness and balance. Only then will a just verdict be rendered.’ ”

  “What did he say?” asked Whitney.

  “The winner is too boastful, and the loser is too servile,” I answered. “And some embellishment.”

  “And so he kills himself? How servile can you get?” The colonel snickered, shaking his head as if Konoye’s act of honor were completely absurd. And to him I suppose it was.

  I turned to Kido, bowing to him in farewell. “You must go now. Good luck to you, Marquis Koichi Kido.”

  He returned my bow. “I will miss you, Captain Jay Marsh. The others do not understand us.”

  “It has been an honor.”

  The colonel took Kido by the arm, and the other soldiers surrounded him. Whitney stood alongside me, watching as they marched Kido inside the prison gate.

  “Good job, Jay. Sorry about Konoye, but this will indeed fix the problem.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I felt suddenly exhausted, as if I needed to sleep for years. And I cannot deny that I felt a pang of remorse, thinking of Konoye’s death and watching the sly and brilliant Kido disappear inside the cold grey prison walls.

  Whitney pointed toward a nearby jeep. “That one’s yours. See you tomorrow.”

  I could hear the water running even before I opened the do
or to my room. Inside, the air was wet and hot. The covers of my bed had already been turned back. She was in a grey cotton shift, kneeling at the edge of the furo bath, her hair hanging loose and silky down her back. Hearing the water running and seeing the long, slim lines of her body I was overcome with such a mix of elation and dread that I stood paralyzed for a long moment in the doorway.

  As I lingered in the doorway she seemed to sense my presence, turning from the furo and watching me carefully. She stood and slowly walked toward me. Behind her, the water was still running, sending up a mist of steam that filled my unheated room like fog. A hopeful smile crept upon her face. Her nipples were hard against the fabric of the shift. The fabric caught against the top of her thighs as she walked, giving her hips a smooth and tantalizing fullness. She tossed her head and then shook it with her chin held high, settling her hair behind her shoulders. And finally she bowed.

  “I waited outside for a long time,” she said. “And the landlord finally let me in. I hope you are not angry with me, Jay-san.”

  “No,” I answered. “You shouldn’t have to wait outside, Yoshiko. It’s become very cold.”

  She glowed thankfully, then knelt at my feet, beginning to take off my shoes. “I watched for your jeep,” she said. “And finally you returned! After so long a day you must take a very hot bath.”

  I said nothing. The shoes came off, one by one. She stood again, looking up into my face as if trying to read my mood. Finally she tried to tease me. “I think maybe you don’t want a bath.”

  “Yoshiko, I have to talk to you. We must speak honestly.”

  She studied my face some more, comprehending my seriousness. “I should turn off the water, then?”

  “Yes. Turn off the water.”

  I removed my coat, tossing it across the desk, then loosened my shirt and sat on the edge of the bed. In the bathroom the water stopped running. Yoshiko stood before me for a second, uncertain of what I wanted, and then sat next to me on the bed. Her almond eyes were wide with apprehension.