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Prologue

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Letter from Tokyo

JAPAN APPEARS CALM AT BRINK OF WAR

British Protest "Defeatist Speech" by American

By Al DeGeorge

Special toThe Christian Science Monitor

TOKYO, DEC. 5 -- While last-minute negotiations to avert war between the United States and Japan approached their deadline in Washington, the average citizen of Tokyo basked in unusually pleasant December weather. This month is traditionally given to New Year's preparations and 1941 is no exception. Residents are sprucing up their houses, restuffing quilts and setting out new tatamis, the grass mats that cover the floor of every Japanese home. When Tokyoites meet, they discuss not matters of state but how, despite food rationing, to secure the oranges and lobsters that no New Year's celebration would be complete without. Even decorative pine boughs are in short supply, since the American embargo on oil has put most civilian trucks on blocks. One way or another, residents find ingenious solutions to problems caused by the embargo's sweeping ban on everything from steel and rubber to aviation fuel. In the case of oil, most taxis now run on charcoal burned by a stove in the trunk. Cars may not have the old oomph, but passengers in Tokyo have learned to be patient.

In a country where the emperor is worshiped, there is no doubt about Japan's position in the negotiations, that Japan has fairly won China and deserves to have the embargo lifted. The American position, that Japan must withdraw its troops first, is considered hypocritical or misguided. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Secretary of War Henry Stimson are regarded here as unfriendly, but the Japanese people have great faith in President Franklin Roosevelt as a more sympathetic ear. A Ginza noodle vendor gave his appraisal of the high-level stalemate: "It is the same with all negotiations. At the last moment, resolution!"

In fact, one of the most anticipated events is the release of the censor's list of new films from Hollywood. There is no embargo on American movies. They fill the theaters, and stars like Bette Davis and Cary Grant grace the covers of fan magazines here. The older generation may sit still for Kabuki, but the younger set is wild for the silver screen.

The only frayed nerves visible showed in a speech delivered today at the Chrysanthemum Club, the meeting place for Tokyo's banking and industrial elite. American businessman Harry Niles declared that Japan had just as much right to interfere in China as America did to "send the marines into Mexico or Cuba." Niles described the American embargo as an effort to "starve the hardworking people of Japan." He also attacked Great Britain for "sucking the life's blood of half the world and calling it a Christian duty."

British Embassy First Secretary Sir Arnold Beechum said that Niles's words were "out-and-out defeatist. The French and the Danes fell through the treasonous activities of collaborationists just like Niles. We are seriously considering a protest to the American embassy over the activities of their national." The American embassy refused to comment, although one official suggested that Niles had stood outside embassy control for a long time. The official, who preferred anonymity, said the club's choice of Niles as its speaker was telling. "It's a strong suggestion of Japanese impatience with the talks in Washington, an ominous indication, I'm afraid."

Otherwise, the city went about its business in its usual brisk fashion, squirreling away treats for the New Year, perhaps lighting an extra stick of incense to pray with, but apparently confident that no final rupture will break Japan's amiable relationship with the United States.

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Chapter One: 1922

Five samurai crept forward with a scuffle of sandals, eyes lit like opals by a late setting sun. A bloody haze flooded the alley, tinting street banners red, soaking drab wooden shops and houses in a crimson wash.

The story was tragic, true, profoundly satisfying. Lord Asano had been taunted by the unscrupulous Lord Kira into drawing a sword in the shogun's presence, an act punishable by death. He was beheaded, his estate confiscated and his retainers dispersed as ronin, wandering samurai with neither home nor allegiance. Although the evil Kira went unpunished, he watched the samurai, especially their captain, Oishi, for the slightest sign that they plotted revenge. And when, after two years, Kira's vigilance finally relaxed, on a snowy December night, Oishi gathered the forty-six other ronin he trusted most, scaled the walls of Kira's palace, hacked the guards to pieces, hauled Kira himself from his hiding place and cut off his head, which they carried to the grave of their dead Lord Asano.

Gen, the strongest and fastest boy, played Oishi, his leadership marked by the aviator's goggles he set high on his head. Hajime, second in command, had a face round as a pie pan and wore a baseball catcher's quilted vest as his suit of armor. Tetsu wrapped muslin around his waist, the style of a criminal in training. The Kaga twins, Taro and Jiro, were rotund boys in raveled sweaters. Both were ready to eat nails for Gen if he asked. Each of the five boys swung a bamboo rod for a sword, and each was deadly serious.

Gen motioned Hajime to look around the ragpicker's cart, Tetsu to search among the sacks stacked outside the rice shop, the twins to block any escape from a side alley of brothels and inns. Prostitutes watched from their latticed windows. It was summer, the peak of a warm afternoon, with neither clouds nor customers in sight, shabbiness plain, the city's poor clapboard houses huddled like a hundred thousand boats battered and driven by storm from the bay to founder along rivers, canals and filthy sluices, here and there a glint of gilded shrines, at all levels laundry rigged on poles, and everywhere the scurrying of children like rats on a deck.

"Kira!" Gen called out. "Lord Kira, we know you're here!"

A whore with a face painted white as plaster hissed at Tetsu and nodded through her bars to a pile of empty sake tubs at the alley's end. Gen approached with wide-apart legs, his bamboo sword held high over his head with both hands. As he brought it down, the tubs thumped like drums. His second stroke was a thrust. The tubs rolled away and Harry squirmed out, his ear pouring blood.

Tetsu jabbed at Harry. The twins joined in until Harry swung his own rod and drove them back. Harry wore two layers of woolen sweaters, shorts and sneakers. He could take a blow or two.

"Submit, submit," Tetsu screamed, whipping up his courage and raining down blows that Harry had no problem deflecting. Gen swung his pole like a baseball bat across Harry's leg, dropping him to one knee. The twins synchronized their blows on Harry's sword until he threw a tub at their heads and bolted by Tetsu.

"The gaijin," Hajime shouted. "The gaijin is getting away."

This always happened. No one wanted to be the vile Lord Kira. Harry was Kira because he was a gaijin, a foreigner, not Japanese at all. As soon as the hunt began in earnest, the fact that he was a gaijin was reason enough for the chase. Harry's hair was as closely cropped as the other boys'. He went to school with them, dressed and moved exactly like them. Didn't matter.

Down the street, a storyteller in a dirty jacket had gathered smaller kids around his paper slide show of the Golden Bat, champion of justice, a grotesque hero who wore a skull mask, white tights and a scarlet cloak. Harry slipped between them and the cart of an orange-ice vendor.

"It's going for the wagon," Hajime said. A gaijin was always "it."

Harry ducked around the ragpicker's teetering wagon and between the legs of the wagon's swaybacked horse, tipping a sack at the rice shop and pausing only long enough to whack Tetsu's shin. The twins weren't fast, but they understood commands, and Gen ordered them to block the doorway to a peep show called the Museum of Curiosities. Hajime threw his rod like a spear to catch Harry in the back. Harry stumbled and felt a hot, damp stab of blood.

"Submit, submit!" Tetsu hopped on one leg because the muslin had started unwrapping from his stomach from the effort of the chase.

"Got it!" Hajime tripped Harry, sending him rolling over the ground and through an open door into the dark yeasty interior of a bar. A workman drinking beer at the counter stood, measured his boot and kicked Harry back out.

The action had drawn the twins from the peep-show door, and Harry raced for it. The peep show itself was a gallery of muted lights, "mermaids" that were papier-mâché monsters stitched to fish and "exotic nudes" that were plaster statues. Harry backed up the stairs past the peep-show entrance, where constricted space meant he faced only one attacker at a time. The twins squeezed forward, falling over each other to reach Harry. Gen took their place, goggles over his eyes to show he meant business. Harry took a stiff jab in the stomach, another on his knee, gave a short chop on Gen's shoulder in return but knew that, step by step, he was losing ground, and the stairway ended on the second floor at a door with a sign that said NO ENTRANCE. THIS DOOR IS LOCKED AT ALL TIMES.

Blood ran down Harry's neck and inside his sweater. At school their one-armed military instructor, Sergeant Sato, gave all the boys bayonet practice with bamboo poles. He would march them onto the baseball diamond dressed in padded vests and wicker helmets to train them in thrust and parry. Gen excelled in attack. Since Harry, the only gaijin in school, was always chosen as a target, he had become adept at self-defense.

Hajime launched his spear again. Its tip raked the crown of Harry's head and bounced off the door. Gen broke Harry's pole with one stroke and, with another, hit Harry's shoulder so hard his arm went numb. Pressed against the door, Harry tried to defend himself with the halves of the pole, but the blows came faster, while Gen demanded over and over, "Submit! Submit!"

Magically, the door opened. Harry rolled backward over a pile of shoes and sandals and found himself on a reed mat looking up at a gaunt man in a black suit and French beret and a circle of women in short satin skirts and cardboard crowns. Cigarettes dangled from expressions of surprise. The air was thick with smoke, talcum, the fumes of mosquito coils and the heavily perfumed sweat of chorus girls.

The man carried an ivory cigarette holder in fingers painted red, blue and black. He tipped his chair to count Gen, Hajime, Tetsu and the Kaga twins gathered at the top of the stairs. "Hey, what are you trying to do, kill him? And five against one? What kind of fair fight is that?"

"We were just playing," Gen said.

"The poor boy is covered with blood." One of the women knelt to lift Harry's head and wiped his face with a wet cloth. He noticed that she had painted her eyebrows as perfect half-moons.

"He's not even Japanese," Hajime said over Gen's shoulder.

The woman reacted with such shock that Harry was afraid she would drop him like a spider. "Look at that, he's right."

"It's the missionary boy," another woman said. "He's always running through the street with this gang."

A man in a straw boater heaved into view. "Well" -- he laughed -- "it looks like the gang has turned on him."

"We were only playing," Harry said.

"He defends them?" the man in the beret said. "That's loyalty for you."

"It speaks Japanese?" Someone pressed forward to observe Harry more carefully.

"It speaks a little," Gen said.

The woman with the cloth said, "Well, your victim isn't going anyplace until he stops bleeding."

Harry's head stung, but he didn't find it unbearable to be in the gentle hands of a chorus girl with half-moon eyes, bare white shoulders and a paper crown, or to have his shoes removed by another chorus girl as if he were a soldier honorably wounded and carried from a field of battle. He took in the narrow room of vanity mirrors, screens, costumes glittering on racks, the photographs of movie stars pinned to the walls. The floor mats were covered with peanut shells and orange rinds, paper fortunes and cigarette butts.

"Achilles stays here." The man in the beret smiled as if he had read Harry's mind. "The rest of you can scram. This is a theater. Can't you see you're in a women's changing room? This is a private area."

"You're here," Gen said.

"That's different," the man with the boater said. "He's an artist, and I'm a manager. Go ahead, get out of here."

"We'll be waiting outside," Hajime threatened. From farther down the stairs, the twins rattled their poles with menace.

Harry looked up at the woman with the cloth. "What is your name?"

"Oharu."

"Oharu, can my friend stay, too?" Harry pointed to Gen.

"That's what you call a friend?" Oharu asked.

"See, that's Japanese spirit, what we call Yamato spirit," the artist said. "Loyal to the bitter, irrational end."

"But he's not Japanese," the manager said.

"Japanese is as Japanese does." The artist laughed through yellowed teeth.

"Can he stay?" Harry asked.

Oharu shrugged. "Okay. Your friend can wait to take you home. But only him, no one else."

"Forget him," Hajime said into Gen's ear. "We'll get him later."

Gen wavered on the threshold. He pulled the goggles from his eyes as if seeing for the first time the women amid their cushions and mirrors, the packs of gold-tipped Westminster cigarettes, tissues and powder puffs, the sardonic men angled in their chairs under a blue cloud of cigarette smoke and mosquito coils stirred languidly by an overhead fan. Gen looked back at the stairway of boys, then handed his bamboo pole to Hajime, slipped off his clogs to step inside and closed the door behind him.

"How is it you speak Japanese?" the artist asked Harry.

"I go to school."

"Japanese school?"

"Yes."

"And bow every day to the emperor's portrait?"

"Yes."

"Extraordinary. Where are your parents?"

"They're missionaries, they're traveling."

"Saving Japanese souls?"

"I guess so."

"Remarkable. Well, fair is fair. We will try to do something for your soul while you are here."

Harry's position as the center of attention was short-lived. A music hall might offer thirty comic skits and musical numbers and as many dancers and singers. Performers shuttled in and out, admitting a brief gasp of orchestra music before the door to the stage slammed shut again. Costume changes from, say, Little Bo Peep to a sailor suit were done on the run, Bo Peep's hoop skirts tossed in all directions for the wardrobe mistress to retrieve. Three or four women shared a single mirror. While Oharu removed Harry's sweaters to wipe blood from his chest, he watched a dancer hardly older than himself slip behind a screen to strip and pull on a ballerina's tutu. In the mirror he could see all of her.

Harry's experience with women was mixed, because his mother was on the road so often as partner to his father's ministry. Since Harry had been a sickly child, he had stayed in Tokyo with his nurse, who knew no better than to treat him like a Japanese. So he had grown up in a world of indulgent warmth and mixed baths, a Japanese boy who pretended to be an American son when his parents visited. But still a boy who had only speculated about the painted faces that stared from the windows of the brothels a few blocks from his home. There was something ancient and still and hooded about the whores in their kimonos. Now he was surrounded by an entirely different kind of woman, casually undressed and full of modern life, and in the space of a few minutes he had fallen in love first with Oharu and her half-moon brows and powdered shoulders, and then with the ballerina. If pain was the price of a sight like this, he could bear it. Sitting up, with the blood wiped off, he was small and skinny with a collection of welts and scratches, but his features were almost as uniform and his eyes nearly as dark as a Japanese boy's.

The artist offered Gen and Harry cigarettes.

"You shouldn't do that," Oharu said. "They don't smoke."

"Don't be silly, these are Tokyo boys, not farm boys from your rice paddy. Besides, cigarettes cut the pain."

"All the same, when the gaijin feels better, they have to go. I have work to do," the manager announced, although Harry hadn't seen him budge. "Anyway, it's too crowded in here. Hot, too."

"Damn." The artist felt his jacket pockets. "Now I'm out of fags."

Harry thought for a second. "What kind of cigarettes? We can get them for you. If you're thirsty, we can get beer, too."

"You'll just take the money and run," the manager said.

"I'll stay. Gen can go."

Gen had been dignified and watchful. He gave Harry a narrow look that asked when he had started giving orders.

"Next time," Harry said, "I'll go and Gen can stay."

It was a matter of adapting to the situation, and Harry's point of view had altered in the last ten minutes. A new reality had revealed itself, with more possibilities in this second-floor music-hall changing room than he'd ever imagined. Much better than playing samurai.

"It would be nice for the girls if we had someone willing to run for drinks and cigarettes," Oharu said. "Instead of men who just sit around and make comments about our legs."

The manager was unconvinced. He picked his collar from the sweat on his neck and gave Harry a closer scrutiny. "Your father really is a missionary?"

"Yes."

"Well, missionaries don't smoke or drink. So how would you even know where to go?"

Harry could have told the manager about his uncle Orin, a missionary who had come from Louisville to Tokyo's pleasure quarter and fallen from grace like a high diver hitting the water. Instead, Harry lit his cigarette and released an O of smoke. It rose and unraveled in the fan.

"For free?" the manager asked.

"Yes."

"Both of you?"

Harry looked over to Gen, who still held back, sensitive about the prerogatives of leadership. The door to the stage flew open for a change of acts, singers dressed in graduation gowns rushing out as ballet dancers poured in. The ballerina Harry had seen before didn't even bother with the privacy of a screen to strip to her skin, towel herself off and pull on a majorette costume with a rising sun on the front. To Harry, her change of costumes suggested a wide range of talents and many facets of personality. Gen had been watching, too.

"Yes," said Gen. "I'm with him."

"You should be. Look at him, a minute ago he was about to lose his head, and now he's in Oharu's lap. That is a lucky boy."

Was it only luck, Harry wondered? The way the fight had unfolded, the stumbling upstairs into the theater's roost, encountering Oharu and the artist, the transition of him and Gen from would-be samurai to men of the world all had a dreamlike quality, as if he had stepped through a looking glass to see a subtly altered, more defined image from the other side.

Otherwise, nothing changed. The following day he and Gen were at school again. They marched onto the baseball field in the afternoon and had the usual bayonet drill with Sergeant Sato. Harry put on his padded vest and wicker helmet so that, one after the other, Jiro and Taro, Tetsu and Hajime could take turns pummeling the gaijin. Gen beat Harry into the ground more viciously than ever.

At the end of the drill, the sergeant asked what their ambition in life was and, to a boy, they shouted. "To die for the emperor!"

No one shouted more fervently than Harry.

Chapter Two: 1941

Harry and Michiko were dancing barefoot to the Artie Shaw version of "Begin the Beguine," the Latin sap taken out of the music and replaced by jungle drums.

There was room to dance because Harry didn't own much, he wasn't a collector of Oriental knickknacks -- netsuke or swords -- like a lot of expatriates in Tokyo. Only a low table, oil heater, gramophone and records, armoire for Western clothes and a wall hanging of Fuji. An oval mirror reflected the red of a neon sign outside.

An erotic zone for the Japanese was the nape of the neck. Harry slipped behind Michiko and put his lips to the bump at the top of her spine, between her shoulder blades, and ran a finger up to the dark V where her hair began, black and sleek, cut short to show off the delicate ivory whorl of her ears. She was skinny and her breasts were small, but her very smoothness was sensual. At the base of her neck where it pulsed were three pinpoint moles, like drops of ink on rice paper. Michiko took his hand and slid it down her stomach while he shifted behind her. When a Japanese said yes and meant it, the word "Hai!" came directly from the chest. It was the way she said "Harry" over and over. In Japanese prints, the courtesan bit a sash to keep from crying out in passion. Not Michiko. Sex with Michiko was like mating with a cat; Harry was surprised sometimes afterward that his ear wasn't notched. But she did possess him, she claimed all of him with a backward glance.

How old was she, twenty? He was thirty, old enough to know that her heart-shaped face was offered as innocently as the ace of spades. And if Saint Peter asked him at the Pearly Gates, "Why did you do it?" Harry admitted that the only honest answer would be "Because it fit." Before lovers leaped into the red-hot mouth of a volcano, did they pause to reconsider? When two addicts decided to share the same ball of opium, did they ask, "Is this a good idea?" His sole defense was that no one fit him like Michiko, and each time was different.

"Harry," she said, "did I tell you that you were the first man I kissed? I saw kissing in Western movies. I never did it."

"Do you like it?"

"Not really," she said and bit his lip, and he let go.

"Jesus, what is this about?"

"You're leaving me, aren't you, Harry. I can tell."

"Christ." It was amazing how women could turn it off, Harry thought. Like a golden faucet. He felt his lip. "Damn it, Michiko. You could leave scars."

"I wish."

Michiko plumped herself down on a tatami and pulled on white socks with split toes. As if those were enough wardrobe in themselves, she sat cross-legged, not knees forward like a woman should, and took a cigarette and her own matches. She was the only Japanese woman he knew who made love naked. Polite Japanese women pitched their voices high when talking to men. Michiko talked to men, women, dogs all the same.

"I can't leave. There are no ships going to sea, there haven't been for weeks."

"You could fly."

"If I could get to Hong Kong or Manila, I could catch the Clipper, but I can't get to Hong Kong or Manila. They won't even let me leave Tokyo."

"You go all the time to see your Western women."

"That's different."

"Tell me, are they fat German fraus or Englishwomen with faces like horses? It's the Englishwoman you're always calling, that cow."

"A horse or a cow, which is it?"

She sucked on her cigarette hard enough to light her eyes. "Westerners smell of butter. Rancid butter. The only good thing I can say for you, Harry, is that for an American, you don't smell so bad."

"There's a lovely compliment." Harry pulled on pants for dignity's sake and fumbled for cigarettes. Michiko had a physical horror of Western women, their color, size, everything. They did seem a little gross next to the fineness of her hands, the sharpness of her brows, the inky curls at the base of her white stomach. But, call it a breadth of taste, he liked Western women, too. "Michiko, I hate to remind you, but we're not married."

"I don't want to be married to you."

"Good." She was an independent free-love Communist, after all, and he was grateful for any dry rock he could stand on when talking to her. "So what the hell are you talking about?"

She had the kind of gaze that penetrated the dark. Harry sensed there was some sort of silent conversation going on, a test of wills that he was losing. Michiko was complicated. She might be Japanese, but she was from Osaka, and Osaka women didn't mince words or back down. She was a doctrinaire Red who kept stacks ofVogueunder a Shinto shrine in a corner of the room. She was a feminist and, at the same time, was a great admirer of a Tokyo woman who, denied her lover's attention, had famously strangled him and sliced off his privates to carry close to her heart. What frightened Harry was that he knew Michiko regarded a double suicide of lovers as a happy ending, but she'd be willing to settle for a murder-suicide if need be. It seemed to him that the safest possible course was to deny they were lovers at all.

"You're never jealous, are you, Harry?"

"How do I answer a question like that? Should I be?"

"Yes. You should be sick with it. That's love."

"No," Harry said, "that's nuts."

"Maybe you just wanted a Japanese girl?"

"I think I could have found an easier one."

Some Americans did take up with Japanese women for the exoticism. Harry, though, had been raised in Japan. A corn-fed girl from Kansas was stranger to him.

Michiko's long look continued, as if she were sending out small invisible scouts to test his defenses.

"The Western woman, is she married? If she's here, she must be married."

"I had no idea when I found you on the street and took you in like a wet stray that you were going to be so suspicious."

Suspicion was in season. Harry moved to the side of the window to look down on the street, at the flow of figures in dark winter kimonos. The evening was balmy for December. The warble of a street vendor's flute floated up, and at the corner a customer in a black suit shoveled noodles from a box into his mouth. In front of a teahouse at the other end of the block, a taller man nibbled a bun. Plainclothesmen had always watched missionaries, too. It was as if he'd inherited a pair of shadows.

"I saw them," Michiko said. "Are you in trouble?"

"No. Harry Niles is the safest man in Japan."

"You've done nothing wrong?"

"Right or wrong doesn't matter." He remembered his father, a Bible thumper with never a doubt in his righteousness. Harry's confidence was in his unrighteousness, his ability to dodge the consequences.

"So, are you going to leave?" Michiko asked. She took a long draw on her cigarette and rearranged her limbs, leaning back on her hands, legs forward, ankles crossed. He could just make out her eyes, the dark caps of her breasts. "You can tell me. I'm used to men who disappoint."

"What about the men in the Party, your local Lenins?"

"The men in the Party talked all day about the oppression of the working class, but every night they headed to the brothels. You know why I chose you, Harry? Because with an American, I had no expectations. I couldn't be disappointed."

Harry didn't know quite what she meant. The big problem with Michiko was that she acknowledged no rational position, only emotion in the extreme, whereas Harry regarded himself as pure reason.

"Do you want us to burn down, Harry?"

It took him a moment to notice his cigarette carried an ash an inch long. People who lived on straw mats had a ready supply of ashtrays. The one he picked up was ceramic and said PACIFIC FLEET OFFICERS CLUB -- PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII around a gilded anchor. Hawaii sounded good. Sunday would be the pre-Christmas party at Pearl, the same as at all U.S. Navy officers clubs around the world.

"Know what?" Harry said. "We should have a party. We're too tense, everyone is. We'll have a few friends over. A couple of the old reporters, artists, movie people."

"That's like the club every night."

"Okay, Michiko, what would make you happy? I'm not going anywhere, I promise. The entire Japanese Empire has marshaled its forces to keep me here. I'm blocked by land and sea and air. Even if I went to the States, what would I be, what would I do? My talent is speaking more Japanese than most Americans, and more English than most Japanese. Big deal. And I know how to buy yen and sell a movie and read a corporate ledger."

"Harry, you're a con man."

"I'm a philosopher. My philosophy is, give the people what they want."

"Do you give women what they want?"

Michiko was capable of retroactive jealousy. She had nothing in common with the mousy Japanese wife or mincing geisha. Harry slipped behind her and picked his words as carefully as a man choosing what could be a necktie or a rope. "I try."

"With all women?"

"No, but with interesting women I try hard. You are interesting."

"Other women?"

"Boring."

"Western women?"

He slid a hand around her. "The worst."

"How?"

"Too big, too busty, too blond. Just awful."

She took a deep drag, and her cigarette flared. "I should burn you every time you lie. They're really awful?"

"Unbearable."

"There won't be a war?"

"Not with the United States. Just war talk."

"You won't leave?"

"No, I'll be right here. Here and here and here." He put his lips to the beauty marks on her back."And do the things I really might."

"So you're staying?"

"As long as you want.I'm telling you true..."He dug his fingers in her hair, soft and thick as water.

"You swear?"

He whispered,"If I could be with you."

"Okay, okay, Harry." Michiko let her head loll in his hand. She stubbed out her cigarette and pulled off her socks. "You win."

The Happy Paris had originally been a tearoom. Harry had transformed it with saloon tables, a bar stocked with Scotch instead of sake and a red neon sign of the Eiffel Tower that sizzled over the door. Half the clientele were foreign correspondents who had been blithely assigned by the AP, UPI or Reuters without a word of Japanese. Some were mere children sent directly from the Missouri School of Journalism. Harry took mercy on them as if he were their pastor and they were his flock, translating for them the gospel of Domei, the Japanese news agency. The other regulars were Japanese reporters, who parked motorcycles outside the club for a quick getaway in case war broke out, and Japanese businessmen who had traveled the world, liked American music and knew one Dorsey brother from the other. The closer war seemed, the more people packed the Happy Paris and all of Tokyo's bars and theaters, peep shows and brothels.

They didn't come for geishas. Geishas were a luxury reserved for financial big shots and the military elite. But if it was a rare man who could afford a geisha, a couple of yen could buy even a poor man the attentions of a café waitress. Waitresses came in all varieties, sweet or acid, shy or sharp, wrapped in kimonos or little more than a skirt and garter.

Many came for Michiko. Michiko was the Record Girl for the Happy Paris. Her task was simply to stand in a sequined jacket by a Capehart jukebox as tall as she was and, at her own mysterious whim, push the buttons for music -- "Begin the Beguine" followed by Basie followed by Peggy Lee. Seventy-eights changed in slow motion from tone arm to turntable under an illuminated canopy of milk-blue glass, and dropped down the spindle with an audible sigh. Michiko did virtually nothing. The waitresses, Kimi and Haruko, circulated in short tricolor skirts. Haruko patterned herself from her hair to her toes on Michiko, but her legs were sausages in contrast to Michiko's in their silky hose. While Haruko and Kimi had actually been geishas and could simper and giggle with the best, Michiko cut customers dead. She played only records of her choice, a balance of swing and blues, closing her eyes and swaying so subtly to a song that she sometimes seemed asleep. The year before, there had been a fan magazine devoted to her -- "The Sultry Queen of Jazz: Her Music, Her Hobbies, Her Weaknesses!" -- totally fabricated, of course, with some snapshots. What made Michiko stand out most, Harry thought, was that even in the middle of a crowded club, with a dozen tables and booths full of voices, food and drinks shuttling back and forth on trays, she could have been alone. Michiko maintained a lack of self-consciousness that, added to a complete lack of morality, lent her a feline independence. She replaced "My Heart Stood Still" with "Any Old Time," Shaw's clarinet made lush with a saxophone reed.

Harry turned away to deal with Willie and DeGeorge. Al DeGeorge was the correspondent ofThe Christian Science Monitorand as stir-crazy as a zoo bear. Willie Staub was a young German businessman headed home from China via Japan and looked like an innocent among thieves.

DeGeorge was saying, "Harry runs a pool on when war will start between America and Japan, Tokyo time. Say there's even military action. The Philippines are on our side of the dateline, Hawaii's a day behind, doesn't matter, has to be Tokyo time. There's got to be at least ten thousand yen in there now. Of course, the house -- that's Harry -- takes five percent. Harry would take five percent on the apocalypse. Today's the fifth. Hell, Willie, you've still got most of December. I got Christmas Day."

"You're a sentimentalist," said Harry.

"The only problem," DeGeorge said, "is that if we're still here when the war begins, we're fucked. No way out." He directed a baleful gaze at Harry. "Rumor is, they're going to get Nippon Air flying again. Put on a show with champagne, cute air hostesses and photographers, and fly some foreign bigwigs to Hong Kong as if everything is absolutely normal. My question is, who gets on that plane?" He turned to Willie. "The embassy sent special-delivery letters telling all Americans to leave. But no, we waited to see what Harry would do. We figured the boat Harry takes, that's the last boat out. Now all the boats are gone and we're down to a single plane."

"I don't know anything about this," Willie said. "I just got here."

"The Nazis must have told you to stay away from Harry."

"I am a Nazi."

"Williethinkshe's a Nazi," Harry told DeGeorge. "Anyway, don't you have a job to do? Didn't you tell me that the first man who calls the war can pick up a Pulitzer?"

"There's no point in staying if I can't do my job. No one will be interviewed by an American. I can't even get them on the telephone because the Japs say all calls have to be in Japanese. Who speaks Japanese?"

Willie told Harry, "My embassy said you were engaged in sharp practices and I should stay away from you."

"Good advice," said Harry.

"But they don't want me, either. I told them about my China report."

"What report?" DeGeorge asked.

Harry said, "Willie was factory manager for Deutsche-Fon in China. He saw a lot."

DeGeorge lowered his voice. "Jap atrocities? Rape of Nanking?"

"Exactly," Willie said.

"Old news."

"Not in Berlin. Germans should know these things."

"It was just one of those things..."Michiko hugged herself as if holding someone tight, her face conveying a private reverie that men in the Happy Paris yearned to join. The noise level was high because the Japanese loved to drink and got drunk fast and flirted with the waitresses even as they craved Michiko. Kimi batted her eyes at Willie, who had the golden looks of Gary Cooper and displayed a wounded Cooperish look when people disappointed him.

"I don't think the German people are interested in atrocities," Harry said. "There's been a lot going on there that you haven't heard about in the hinterlands of Asia."

"But Germany is winning the war."

"Maybe. You should probably keep your nose clean and stay away from me."

"You're the only person I know in Tokyo. Also I had to show you something." Willie pulled a folded newspaper from his jacket, but Harry was distracted by a customer who grabbed Haruko and planted her on his lap while she squirmed like a satin worm. This wasn't a rare occurrence; she had many admirers.

Harry joined them. "Haruko, go wait on tables. Matsu, let her go."

"He's just playful," Haruko said.

"He's drunk."

"That, too."

Matsu released her and let his head roll sloppily. He had an artistic beard and wore a viewfinder around his neck, in case anyone forgot his calling.

"It was just one of those nights,"Matsu sang along.

"You're pissed."

Matsu inhaled deeply and broke into a grin. "Yesss, I think so. I hope so. Harry, do you rememberWatching Cherry Blossoms Fall?"

"A sensitive film."

"My film, thank you. Do you think, afterward, that people will remember that film when they think of the director Matsu?"

"After what?"

Matsu lifted the viewfinder to his eye and scanned the room. "This is beautiful. Not Paris, I'm sorry, but still beautiful. Because the only time you'll know the soul of another man is when he's drunk. And a man can tell things to a waitress that he will never tell his wife. This is a happy place."

"That's very profound. How is the new film?"

"Just starting."

"A love story?"

"No lovers. Many planes."

"You're still with Toho Studios?"

"No." Matsu laughed, and somewhere in the laugh was a moan. "Not anymore."

Harry finally grasped the other man's despair. "They called you up."

"I will serve the emperor." Matsu tucked in his chin.

"What are you going to do in the army? You're a moviemaker."

"I'll still be making films. I'm going in the morning, but I wanted to see Michiko one more time. That is the image I want to carry with me, the unattainable Michiko. Unless you think perhaps I can attain her."

"You can't afford her."

"But I'm rich," Matsu said. "Tonight I'm rich." From an envelope he pulled a stack of crisp, light green bills that said japanese government in English. Matsu stuffed the bills back into the envelope. "For my new assignment. There will be many planes, many tanks. No cherry blossoms."

"A trip to the moon on gossamer wings..."Michiko mouthed the words as if each rested momentarily on her lips. Not that she understood English.

Harry returned to his table. "Sorry. A conversation about the arts."

"This is what I have to show you." Willie unfolded a newspaper to a picture of soldiers in winter coats raising their rifles as they walked down the gangway of a transport ship. He passed it to Harry. "I saw it at the German embassy today. I can't read it, but I know you can."

The photo caption read, "WELCOME HOME. Hero Returns from China to Well-Deserved Honors." Although the page was smudged -- newspapers hadn't had decent paper stock for years -- Harry saw that the man on the ramp was a colonel with the deep-set eyes of a fasting monk. A long sword in a utilitarian sheath hung from his belt.

"Ishigami. How about that?"

"That's what I thought," Willie said.

"Who is it?" DeGeorge asked.

"A long-lost friend," Harry said. "I ought to read the newspapers more thoroughly."

DeGeorge asked Harry, "What day is left in the pool for Willie?"

"The eighth. That's Monday. War in three days is cutting it a little close."

"I don't bet," Willie said.

"A social bet," said DeGeorge. "Could happen."

Harry shook his head. "Ninety new American films have just arrived.Too Hot to Handle, Tarzan Escapes, One Hundred Men and a Girl.Who on earth would go to war when there's entertainment like that?"

"What do you do here, Harry?" Willie asked.

DeGeorge said, "Ostensibly, he's a movie rep. He does something else, I've just never been able to figure out what the fuck it is. Is it true, Harry, you're actually giving a speech at the Chrysanthemum Club tomorrow? You, at the Chrysanthemum Club?"

"I'm virtually respectable."

Willie returned to the picture in the newspaper. "Can Ishigami find you?"

"You did," Harry said. He didn't want to look at the picture, as if the image might sense his attention and look up from the page.

"If we'd thought a bit, of the end of it..."Michiko whispered with the song. Sometimes she seemed to know every nuance of the lyrics, Harry thought, sometimes she might have been repeating nonsense. He couldn't tell anymore.

"So, really and truly, Harry, is it going up?" DeGeorge asked.

"What?"

"The big balloon. War. Everyone's reading about last-minute negotiations in Washington. What do I tell the readers ofThe Christian Science MonitorandReader's DigestandThe Saturday Evening Postwhile they drink their warm Postum and listen toAmos 'n AndyandFibber McGee,what do I tell Mr. and Mrs. America about the glorious Japanese Empire?"

"Tell them that the Japanese have only the purest of intentions. As exemplified by their actions in China, right, Willie?"

Willie kept his mouth shut.

"Weren't you in China?" DeGeorge asked Harry.

"Not for long."

"What are you going to do?" Willie asked Harry.

"I don't know. No good deed goes unpunished, right?"

"You must leave Japan."

"How? Americans can't even leave town. Maybe Ishigami just wants to say hello." Harry tried to hoist a smile for Willie's sake. "Maybe this whole war scare will just blow over."

"You think so?" asked Willie.

Not a chance, Harry thought. He had performed one decent act in his life, and something so out of character was bound to catch up. Michiko followed Artie Shaw with Benny Goodman, clarinets for the ages. Goodman was the complete musician: he could cover registers high and low. In comparison, Shaw was all flash, living at the higher register, poised for a crash. Harry figured he was more like Shaw. When he looked at the picture of Ishigami, he was back in Nanking all over again. Ten Chinese prisoners knelt in the light of torches, hands tied behind their backs. A corporal ladled water from a bucket over Ishigami's sword. Ishigami took a practice swing and left a shining fan of water in the air.

Kimi shook Harry's shoulder to get his attention. "There's a soldier at the door."

The blood left Harry's face as he rose from his chair, expecting the worst, but it was only a sergeant with a gun, shouting, "Come out, Lord Kira, wherever you are!"

Excerpted from December 6: A Novel by Martin Cruz Smith
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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December 6; A Novel

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