December 6 (V5.0)

by Martin Cruz Smith

  Shozo sighed as if a prized student had failed.

  Go was infuriated for the sergeant’s sake. “You should be ashamed! An opportunity like that? To be treated right?”

  “Back off,” Harry said. He’d had it with Corporal Go. “What confusion?” he asked Shozo. Although he was half in the maw of Sugamo Prison, this new element had his attention. Uncertainty, yes, but why confusion?

  “Just a word,” said Shozo.

  “A very particular word.” Harry tried to get around Go to the sergeant. “Who wants to know?”

  “You don’t ask the questions. We ask the questions,” Go said and broke the cane across Harry’s back.

  My mistake, Harry thought. Never provoke police, especially in jail. And never let violence get started. The pain radiated through Harry’s body from kidney level, and he slid down the wall to his knees.

  “Are you all right, Harry?” Shozo stooped to ask.

  “Sure.” It was a fluid situation, that much was clear. So far as Harry was concerned, Shozo’s push for a confession proved he didn’t have enough for an arrest. However, the Thought Police were capable of anything when antagonized. Harry had just pressed too hard.

  “No hard feelings. No warning, sorry.” Go grinned with his upper teeth.

  “Now, while you can, Harry, write your statement.”

  “Can’t.” He couldn’t even stand.

  “Then tell me about the tanks.”

  “Don’t know.”

  “The Magic Show.”

  “No.”

  “Lady Beechum. We know she’s a spy.”

  A bugle call and the clamor of a bell were followed by a general coughing, a rustle of bodies on thin mats, a sickly chorus of hundreds in a mausoleum above and below. Time to contemplate a person’s spiritual nature, Harry thought. Time to call the bluff.

  “I’m ready to go.”

  Shozo helped Harry up. “Would you like some water? Tea? Last chance, Harry.” Shozo had the expression of a fireman removing a ladder from someone who refused to leave a burning building.

  “No. May I go?”

  “Of course.”

  Shozo called a guard to return Harry to the processing area. On the way out, he passed a trustee in a patched kimono pasting rules up in the hall:

  NO SPEAKING BETWEEN PRISONERS IS ALLOWED. NO SIGNALING BETWEEN PRISONERS IS ALLOWED. NO DISRESPECT TO WARDS OR GUARDS IS ALLOWED. NO REMOVAL OR DAMAGE OF THE CELL LIGHT IS ALLOWED. NO BLOCKING OR COVERING OF THE DOOR SIGHT IS ALLOWED. RISING IS AT 0600, INSPECTION AT 0630, EXERCISE AT 0900, LUNCH AT 1100, DINNER AT 1600, SLEEP AT 1900. HAIRCUTS TWICE A MONTH. SPECIAL ITEMS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE COMMISSARY. COMMENTS SHOULD BE DIRECTED ONLY TO THE PRISON GOVERNOR.

  This time the rules were in English.

  • • •

  HARRY FOUND a train platform half a mile from the prison on a road between potato fields. Scarecrows whirled their arms at the rising sun, and Harry found cheer in the fact that his shirt wasn’t sticking to his back, which meant he had only a welt, not broken skin, a good sign, although the very fact that he construed a lack of blood a good sign was, he admitted, a bad sign indeed. He sucked on a cigarette to ease the pain and read the schedule plaque. There wasn’t much service on a Sunday. And prospects for the rest of the week? He felt the sun stretch his shadow back toward the high walls and chimneys of the prison.

  Palm Springs, Palm Springs, Palm Springs, he repeated like a mantra. Alice, Alice, Alice. Sometimes a man sensed a deal falling apart. The blow with the cane was a bad sign through and through. He hadn’t been taken so unawares since school, when Gen once caught him with a wooden sword before Harry had his padding on. Someone in the navy had to be sniping at Gen for Shozo to know so much about oil. Worse than the hit, though, was remembering what he’d done to Michiko. She’d laid herself down to save his life, and he’d reacted like a saint stoning a slut.

  A crow trudged up the road and shared a glance with Harry, one wiseguy to another. There was nothing he could do. On Sunday morning there was no traffic, not even a truck to bum a ride with.

  The worst sign of all was what had earned Harry the welt on his back.

  Confusion.

  Harry’s whole story about secret oil tanks on Oahu was meant to cause uncertainty; that was the point of the fabrication. Uncertainty was a paralyzed state where cooler heads could prevail. Confusion was active, committed, a labeling of targets. Confusion was planes in the air.

  20

  THE TRAIN WAS a narrow-gauge local that rattled across the hard crust of winter fields, and Harry rode standing up rather than let his back touch a seat. Other riders carried dusty sacks of root vegetables. Beer bottles and dead cigars rolled at his feet. He had never had such good posture, or such a watchful eye from fellow passengers, and when the train reached Ueno Station in Tokyo at nine o’clock and emptied at a platform with a sign that said CELEBRATE ANTI-SPY WEEK!, Harry felt as if a spotlight had followed him from the prison.

  Outside the station, he slipped into a phone booth to call the waitress Haruko. Ueno Station was a building on a Mussolini scale, but its phone booths were intimate stalls that crammed the caller against a mouthpiece.

  “Michiko isn’t here,” Haruko said.

  “I told her to go to your place and wait there.”

  “She came all dressed up like a geisha, changed into my best dress and left.”

  The day was bright enough for men emerging from the station to pull down their hats, and Harry felt himself sinking back into welcome anonymity.

  “Where to?”

  “She was upset,” Haruko said.

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “Just that she was going to find you.”

  “All she had to do was wait at your place.”

  Haruko was so silent that Harry thought the line had gone dead until she said, “Michiko didn’t think so.”

  “What did she think?”

  “You’re leaving her. She’s sure of it.”

  “No one can leave. The whole country is closed.”

  “Except for Houdini.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s what Michiko calls you. The escape artist.”

  From the vantage point of the booth, Harry became aware of a six-wheeled army staff car with soldiers on the running boards, at the park entrance across the avenue from the station. Two army Datsuns stopped in the middle of the traffic. They were full-size sedans, not the “baby cars” Datsun sold to the public, and each car was stuffed with soldiers.

  “Harry?”

  “I’m sorry, Haruko, you’ll have to remind me, what was your best dress?”

  “White with a sailor collar and blue buttons down the side. And a white cap and a little blue bag. She just swept in and took them. Then she borrowed some money.”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  In a different tone, Haruko said. “She has a gun.”

  “I know.”

  The staff car rolled into the park, and a moment later the two army sedans followed.

  “Should I come in to work tonight? Will the Happy Paris be open?”

  “No, I think the Happy Paris will be closed.”

  “How long?”

  “For a while. If you see Michiko, tell her to meet me at the ballroom.”

  Harry hung up. He made one more brief phone call, went back into the station and descended steps to an underpass of newsstands, food shops, a shoe shine and pharmacy where Harry picked up a germ mask, a ready-made disguise that he slipped on his face. As he emerged at the park, a backfire led his eye to the gleam of a rear bumper just disappearing behind pines.

  Harry set off running. He knew UenoPark by heart from having carried the art box when Kato sketched the beggars and prostitutes who inhabited the grounds at night. A Sunday-morning crowd was different, and on such a warm December day, people filled the paths, art lovers headed to the museum, families to the zoo. Even so, the cars pushed through and drew away from Harry until he was
left breathless at the edge of an undulating field that stretched maybe a hundred yards to a black border of bare cherry trees.

  He didn’t know why he’d tried to follow the cars, it was a little like following a swarm of wasps. Perhaps because they shouldn’t have been on the footpaths. Perhaps because Shozo had used the word “confusion.” Harry was confused himself, and there was a side of his nature that hated to be in the dark. Now, gasping for breath, taking in the wide field, digging out a cigarette, he decided that not being in the know was okay, too. That was why a man should spend time around nature, for perspective. In one day he would be bound for California with a Lady by his side. His back stung, but he could breathe, hence no broken ribs, and smoking dulled the pain. Only surface injuries, and Asakusa was definitely walkable from here. Just a little dizzy. The episode at the prison had gone badly. Then there was Ishigami. It was crazy to be angry at someone who was trying to kill you, personal affront was beside the point, but the picture of the colonel with Michiko lit a flame under Harry’s brainpan. He wasn’t a man given to self-torture, but for some reason he could see Ishigami touch her, expertly apply the paint, lift the collar from her shoulders. In his mind Harry watched her eyes and examined her expression for signs of pleasure. He could stare at the blue sky over UenoPark and witness the entire scene, the amour of the colonel and the Record Girl. Harry was hiding from Ishigami. The question now was whether to hide from her. Pretty funny. She was dangerous enough with a knife, let alone a gun. Did he want her at the ballroom so he could find her or avoid her? Perhaps she was asking the same question. The world was tilting like a pinball machine. East met West, and foreign correspondents lost their heads. Harry felt for DeGeorge, for the faithful accountant Kawamura being caned in a Sugamo cell, but if Harry’s story about oil tanks in Hawaii had caused confusion, it was too late to explain or confess. Things were in motion.

  He found he had walked out onto the familiar earth of the park’s great lawn, in the spring the scene of the debauch called cherry-blossom viewing. Kato and Oharu used to bring a quilt, champagne, sake and a ukulele and drink and sing while blossoms fell, and Harry served as their page. Was there ever a California beach as merry as that? He doubted it.

  December was a patchwork month. Kids in threadbare sweaters ran down the field’s long incline to launch kites and gliders. Paper octopi and dragons dipped and swooped above a ring of autumn maples, and the breeze carried the smoke of chestnuts and coals. By a bridle path that ringed the field, a group of newspaper reporters and photographers stood with a pretty little girl of about five, wearing a red kimono and holding golden mums. Sundays were always slow news days. He considered letting the reporters in on the headless Al DeGeorge, that would be a scoop.

  An army scout car moved along the bridle path and came to a stop fifty yards shy of the newsmen. The car was an open two-seater with a driver and, facing backward, a soldier with a film camera. Bell & Howell, it looked like to Harry. For a minute nothing happened besides the twisting of kites overhead. That was the movie business, as Harry knew full well, hurry up and wait, but curiosity lured him closer.

  A horse and rider emerged from the cherry trees onto the path. The horse was a tall gray. The rider was in tweed from hat to boots, and although Harry had seen his joyless little face, mustache and round glasses at the Yasukuni Shrine the day before, it still took him a moment to realize the rider was General Tojo. With the world in the balance, the prime minister was taking a leisurely Sunday ride through UenoPark in a wholesome tweed and a hat with a pheasant feather plopped on his shaved skull. Tojo was prime minister and war minister in one, and usually when he rode, it was in uniform at the Roppongi barrack grounds, where flags flew, drums beat and cheers of “Banzai!” resounded from a thousand troops. If Harry were to criticize, he would have said that Tojo was a little stiff in the seat, lacking the John Wayne slouch. An open Packard with three women under a plaid blanket crawled onto the path behind him. Harry recognized Mrs. Tojo; she was famous for promoting the patriotic value of big families, having produced seven children herself. Today she made an unhappy brood hen, a daughter on each side, her stare fixed on the back of her husband’s bobbing head. Finally a six-wheeled staff car with bodyguards standing on the running boards appeared. Up ahead, the cameraman in the scout car bowed, motioned with his hand, bowed again. Assembled, the entire parade crept forward, and the photographers on the side of the path snapped away as if Tojo were leading a steeplechase. He rode bolt upright, reins in his left hand, right hand free to draw a sword he wasn’t wearing, not with a hacking jacket. Harry had never seen General Tojo out of uniform before; had anyone besides the missus? Tweed suggested a fishing pole or a spot of tea. Maybe Alice or the Mad Hatter would show up, Harry thought. The reporters practically prostrated themselves as Tojo approached; the photographers apologized while they took pictures to be on time for the evening edition. A cowboy would have reared his horse. Tojo reined the gray to a stop and sat, motionless, bright certitude shining from his glasses. The staff car of bodyguards hung back, out of the frame, while the girl in the red kimono, exquisite, a little doll, handed up the golden mums. Tojo seemed distracted for a second by the sight of Harry, as if one brushstroke in a masterpiece were wrong, but lost him among flashing bulbs and older people rushing forward to add their bows and small boys to salute. Franklin Roosevelt would have answered with a jaunty grin or Churchill with a V. For Tojo, expression was utterly superfluous; the bouquet could have been ragweed for all he seemed to care. He returned the flowers so they could be presented to his wife, who raised a tepid smile from her blanket. Then the caravan got into gear again, making a slow circuit of the bridle path. The general hadn’t smiled, not once, but what Harry had spied behind the glasses was worse, and that was triumph.

  • • •

  ROY HOOPER was singing “Rock of Ages” in the back row of church when Harry showed up. Things were bad enough for Methodists; American wives and children had been sent home, while Japanese members of the congregation dwindled week by week until only a handful came to Sunday service. Hooper’s father had preached in this same modest church with its mahogany pews, pedal organ, plaque with hymnal numbers. Hooper himself had chosen the Foreign Service, but still he resented the fact that the cross now shared wall space with a portrait of the emperor in a Shinto robe, the Son of Heaven ensconced in the house of the Lord.

  Hooper also resented a finger jabbing him in the back.

  “Hoop, we’ve got to talk.”

  Hooper whispered, “Harry, what are you doing here? We’re in the middle of the service. Whatever it is can wait.”

  “It can’t wait.” Harry poked him again.

  “I’m not going.”

  “I’ll have a cigarette while I wait.”

  “Jesus.” Hooper led the way out. As soon as they reached the street, he turned on Harry. “What is the matter with you? Other people go to church on Sunday. Remember that? Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?”

  “Keep walking.” Harry had pulled his germ mask off, and he thought some of the passengers waiting at a trolley shelter looked more interested in the church than in the next ride. Otherwise, the street held the stillness of shuttered shops. The only store open sold candies and toys, taking advantage of kids being home. A top skittered out the door into the light.

  “Cigarette?”

  “I’m quitting.”

  “Good for you. Filthy habit.”

  “The first cigarette I had was at the age of twelve, with you.”

  “Fun times.”

  “No, they weren’t fun, they were stupid.”

  “You’re just saying that because you always got caught.”

  “Not all of us are born thieves.”

  “Nip?” Harry showed his flask.

  “No, I didn’t leave church in the middle of a service to have a drink.”

  “Pretty sparse attendance.”

  “You noticed. Well, there’s been a little intimidation. The authorities demand
that the church support the war.”

  “Which one?”

  Harry turned the corner and led Hooper by a row of child-size statues with toys and flowers at their feet. Christians relegated the souls of unbaptized babies to limbo; the Japanese made room and welcomed all. In a corner of the cemetery was a red and gold one-room temple where Harry bought a joss stick. The rest of the plot was a jumble of headstones, stakes and blowsy roses. The stakes had special Sanskrit names given the dead; the more money paid, the longer the name. Harry suspected that when Charon ferried souls across the river Styx, he sold tickets for first class or steerage. At the bottom of one stake was Kato’s name. Harry lit the joss stick and set it in a glass on a shelf of the stone. Into another cup he poured an offering of Scotch.

  He offered the flask to Hooper. “You’re sure?”

  “What the hell.”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid so.”

  Harry added a cigarette on the shelf for Kato, and Hooper had one, too. It was peaceful in the cemetery, among the stones and wilting flowers.

  Hooper said, “I hear you’re on the plane. I can think of a few thousand people more deserving than you. Why you?”

  “I earned it.”

  “I bet. And if I brought you a mother whose small children were waiting for her in Shanghai, what would you say?”

  “I’d say bring your violin. Anyway, it’s not that sort of flight, it’s back and forth, just to show the imperial flag.”

  “Are you coming back, Harry?”

  Harry said nothing.

  Hooper laughed weakly. “At least you don’t lie about it, I suppose that’s something.”

  “The Lord hates a lying tongue. How did you know about the plane?”

  “You’re not the only one in Tokyo with contacts.”

  “You’re the only one at the embassy with contacts.”

  “The American embassy is staffed with keenly intelligent men.”

  “Right, starting with the ambassador, only he can’t speak a word of Japanese and he’s deaf as a post. Where is he now?”