Thank the gods for Frank.
Sometimes she wondered what she had ever done to deserve him and wished she could do more to ease his burdens. She knew how he agonized over the growing inevitability of war with Japan, not for his own sake or even for his country's, but for her. He knew the pain it would cause her to live among Americans while they warred with her homeland
Meiko stopped herself. She had to stop thinking of Japan as home; Hawaii was home now.
With Matsuo dead and everyone back in Japan undoubtedly believing her the same, she felt as if she had been cut free of chu and ko and all the other on of Japanese life. How could she have obligations to people who believed her dead?
She looked up again and saw she was closer to the man.
He was still standing there, staring at her. With the sun glaring behind him she could not see his features. Since it was clear he wasn't going to move, she would have to go around him. She gave him a wide berth, averting her eyes as she passed on his landward side. As she came abreast of him, he removed his hat and turned toward her.
"Meiko?"
His voice was hoarse but… something familiar about it. She glanced up and got her first look at his face.
Her knees gave way.
Matsuo!
She tumbled forward but he caught her. As he supported her she gazed into his face. It couldn't be, but it was. Those same intense eyes, that same broken nose.
"I've been waiting all day for you to come," he said in a voice thick with emotion, nodding while tears filled his eyes as they filled her own. "Yes! I'm alive, and so are you!"
With a sob of joy Meiko fell into his arms and clung to him as if her very life depended on it.
Matsuo! My Matsuo is back from the dead!
* * *
I paced back and forth from room to room through the apartment. I picked up the Advertiser, skipped the news, and went straight to the funny page. I looked at Joe Palooka and Li'l Abner but didn't read the words. All I could see were the illustrations and they looked like they’d been done by the same guy. I tried reading my new copy of Raymond Chandler's latest, Farewell, My Lovely, but was too tense to concentrate. I listened to "Jack Armstrong" on KGMB, then turned it off. I was on my second scotch and water but the liquor wasn't calming me. I needed Meiko.
Where was she? She usually didn't stay out this long. I began to wonder if something had happened to her. Some wild drivers used that road to the beach and she’d been on a bicycle.
I was worried and I was looking for something to do, so I decided to take a ride down to Ala Moana and find her.
* * *
When they had finally stopped their sobbing, and when Meiko had recovered sufficiently from the shock to trust her legs, they walked back to the banyans that bordered the beach. They sat and told each other their own side of what happened that July day in 1937.
"Poor Cho!" Meiko said when Matsuo had told her whose body Kikou had seen on the floor of his room.
"I felt that way too, at first," Matsuo said. "But no longer. His loose tongue led to our being discovered, and his suicide resulted in driving you away from your family and your homeland."
Meiko was surprised by the bitterness in his tone. She had never heard him speak that way. She looked at him closely for the first time since he had revealed himself—she had been too awed and numb with shock and joy to do any more until now.
Matsuo had changed. He had always had an intensity about him, a driving energy that seemed to propel him through life. But he was incandescent now, as if someone had twisted a knob and turned up the current flowing through him.
"I've come to take you back," he said, holding her hands and looking deep into her eyes. "Back home."
How many times during the years she had thought him dead had she dreamed of this moment? How many times had she fantasized that Matsuo would somehow appear before her alive and well and take her back home?
Home.
A cascade of images splashed before her—mother, father, the house, the green islands of the Inland Sea, shrines, temples, Shinto festivals, bento lunches on the streets of Tokyo—
—and then she remembered Frank and gasped. The blinding joy suffusing her suddenly dimmed. She knew in that instant that she faced a terrible choice.
"Matsuo, I'm… I'm married."
"I know." She saw sparks in his eyes but his voice was calm. "To Frank Slater. But that doesn't matter now."
"It does matter," she said, feeling a brief flare of anger.
"You married him in the false belief that I was dead. You can't be held to that."
"We married each other in good faith. I made a vow. But it's more than that, Matsuo. He gave my life back to me when I thought there was nothing left. He's been very good for me and very good to me."
Matsuo watched her, nodding. "I see that. And for that I am indebted to him." He paused, then said, "Do you love him?"
Meiko had been dreading that question, but she had to face it. "I'll never love anyone the way I love you, Matsuo. But yes, I love Frank. In a different way, with a different part of me."
Matsuo looked away. She could see the muscles in his jaw working as he stared out to sea. His voice was bitter when he finally spoke.
"What a fool I was. What a dreamer. I thought it would be so easy, like a scene out of a movie. I would reveal myself to you, we would embrace, and then I'd whisk you back to Japan where we would live happily ever after."
"Matsuo—"
He turned toward her again. "You have to come back with me, Meiko."
Part of her wanted to forget everything here in Hawaii and do just that. But another part called up the vision of a good, kind, decent man sitting and worrying, waiting faithfully for the return of the woman he loved and trusted.
"I can't just leave."
"I've spent four and a half years mourning you. Now I find you're alive—I can't lose you again, Meiko. I won't!"
"I mourned you, too. And I never stopped loving you. And I want to go back with you. But I can't right now."
"You must."
"Will you think better of me if I desert Frank without a word of explanation? I know what I would think of myself."
That gave him pause.
"Give me time to find a way to tell him."
"There isn't time!" he blurted. "There's less than a week."
Although the sun was still warm on her skin, Meiko felt an icy blast of cold against her back.
"What do you mean?"
He looked away again. "I shouldn't have said that. Forget what you heard."
"You're going to attack the American fleet," she whispered. "That's it, isn't it? This weekend!"
"Meiko," he said, his eyes wide as he gripped her arm, "you mustn't even think that, let alone repeat it!"
"But Frank expects it," she said. "He's waiting for it. An air attack from the north on a Saturday or Sunday morning. He thought it might come last weekend. He barely slept the entire time."
Matsuo's eyes had widened almost to the bulging point. "You mean it's a trap?"
"No. No one will listen to him."
Matsuo seemed relieved, but Meiko felt as if the air had thickened, making it difficult to breathe.
"It's going to happen, isn't it? There's going to be a sneak attack and then war."
"Not a sneak attack. We will declare war first, then attack immediately after."
"But why? Why?"
"It has to be," he said, his expression growing fierce. "The Americans have given us no choice."
Meiko stood. "There's always a choice. There has to be. You can't—"
She gasped as she glanced around the edge of the banyan trunk and saw Frank walking in their direction along the pavement that skirted the beach.
Matsuo began rising to her side. "What's wrong?"
"Stay back!" she said, not looking at him and trying not to move her lips. "It's Frank! He mustn't see you!"
"Go to him," Matsuo whispered. "Keep him from coming any closer. I will be ri
ght here tomorrow afternoon, waiting to hear your decision."
I don't want to decide, Meiko thought, but said nothing.
Instead, she waved to Frank and ran toward him, biting back a sob when she saw his face brighten at the sight of her, loathing herself for smiling and acting as if nothing was wrong, as if nothing had changed.
But everything had changed.
* * *
Matsuo waited as long as he could. Finally, when the tension became unbearable, he rose to his knees and peeked around the trunk. He spotted Meiko and Frank about fifty yards down the road. Their backs were to him. They were walking away. As he watched, he saw Frank put an arm over Meiko's shoulders and hug her close.
That simple gesture, the warmth, the intimacy, the possessiveness it implied filled Matsuo with a sudden, blinding rage. He wanted to scream and sprint down the road to where they were; he wanted to rip Frank's offending arm from its socket and cast it into the sea. He drove his fist against the trunk and closed his eyes.
Soon the rage passed, leaving him weak. When he looked up again, Meiko and Frank were out of sight. He slumped against the trunk.
What was happening to him? He had never flown into such rages before. Not like him… frightening. He had too much to do, too many responsibilities to allow violent emotions to threaten his judgment.
Perhaps that was the problem: too many demands coordinating all the intelligence regarding Pearl Harbor. And now, sneaking into Honolulu to meet Meiko, risking his family honor and his commission by fabricating a need to contact this US intelligence officer's wife, saying she possessed sensitive information about the harbor defenses. And then not having the meeting go the way he had hoped…
No wonder he felt as if he were about to explode.
He replaced his hat on his head, rose to his feet, and walked down to the waterline, thinking. What if Meiko decided to stay with Frank? What if she mentioned his slip about the attack on the fleet? That would confirm the suspicions Meiko said Frank already had. And with Meiko's story to back him up, Frank could convince the fleet to scatter throughout the Pacific, making an attack on Pearl Harbor useless.
Matsuo looked out to sea. The Strike Force had already covered more than half the distance to Oahu by now. What have I done?
* * *
Meiko lay awake in the bed next to Frank. She had given up hoping for sleep. She felt as if she were being torn apart. All she could think about was Matsuo and what she had learned from him today. He had changed so—more intense, more driven than she had ever seen him. But she sensed that inside he was still the same old Matsuo.
Yet she didn't want to leave Frank. How could she desert him? He didn't deserve to be hurt like that.
And yet she realized she could not keep herself from Matsuo now that she knew he was alive. She wanted to be with him tonight and every night. She still loved him, had never stopped loving him.
What am I going to do?
The question tortured her. She whimpered softly now with the pain of it.
"You okay?" Frank said from beside her.
"Yes." How long had he been awake? "I just wish I could sleep."
"Something on your mind?" He moved closer. "Want to talk about it?"
Please don't be nice, she thought, feeling miserable and unworthy of him. Please don't be kind and understanding.
"I—I was thinking about war." And in a way she had been. Matsuo's slip about an air attack on the fleet had cast a malignant light on his return.
"Aw, don't think about that." He slipped his arms around her and hugged her. "That's my job."
"But I don't want anything to happen to you when it comes."
"Don't worry about me. Guys in my line of intelligence usually get posted behind the lines. We work with radios, not guns."
"But what about this weekend? What if the attack you're expecting actually takes place? Please promise me one thing. No matter what happens, please don't go to the harbor."
"If it's on a Saturday or Sunday morning—and that's when it will happen if it happens at all—I'll be right here with you."
But what if I'm not here? What if I'm gone? Then where will he be?
She wanted to tell him what she knew, but that would mean revealing that Matsuo was alive and here on Oahu. And she couldn't do that. At least not yet.
Maybe not ever.
They lay quietly, side by side in the dark. Soon Frank's breathing became slow and rhythmical as he fell asleep.
But for Meiko there was no sleep.
DECEMBER 4
There comes a point when you have to doubt yourself. When everyone thinks you're wrong, maybe you are. When everyone suspects you're a little bit crazy, maybe you are.
At least you have to wonder.
On Thursday morning I stood on the bulkheading by the Navy Hospital and wondered about myself as I watched Task Force 2, consisting of Pearl's last carrier, the Lexington, along with three heavy cruisers and five destroyers, crawl like snails through the narrow channel opposite Waipio Point on their way to Midway. We would have no carrier here until the Saratoga pulled in from Puget.
I wished to hell all the ships were leaving. Then there’d be no reason for anyone to be interested in Pearl. But one glance to my right was all I needed to set my nerves on edge: Eight heavies—the battleships Pennsylvania, Arizona, West Virginia, California, Maryland, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Tennessee—lined up two by two along the eastern shore of Ford Island like clay pigeons in a shooting gallery. And more were due in this weekend. We would have more ships in harbor on Saturday and Sunday than at any other time since Fourth of July weekend.
Mentally, I capitulated. I was powerless, so I decided to back off. I’d let myself get involved to the point of obsession. Maybe I’d lost my perspective. Maybe it was time to sit back and let the big boys do what they were getting paid for. Maybe Admiral Turner had special reasons for filtering every scrap of intelligence through War Plans and only trickling out what he considered absolutely necessary. Maybe Harry Thornton was privy to what Turner and Stark and all the Navy Department brass were up to and couldn't let me in on it.
All my problems could have been due to the simple fact that I was in an awkward position: Because of my post in translation, I had access to a significant amount of intelligence regarding Japan; I probably knew as much as anyone on Oahu. What I knew had me worried, but I obviously didn't have the whole picture. Those who did have the whole picture did not seem to be worried.
So what was the point in making myself sick when I didn't know the whole story? It seemed to be affecting my marriage, as well. Meiko was not herself. My fault, I was sure. My obsession with the growing inevitability of a Japanese attack must have finally taken its toll. She was like a coiled spring this morning, ready to break loose and bounce off the walls at the slightest jolt. She kept starting sentences and never finishing them.
But things were going to change now. I was going to put this sneak attack business out of my head and just go on with my routine daily duties. I was going to get things back to normal again.
* * *
Meiko tried to melt in the fervor of Matsuo's embrace, but she was too tight, too tense.
She had found him on the beach and told him, "I'll go back with you."
On hearing those words he had shouted with joy, wrapped her in his arms, and swung her around. She wanted to share that joy, but could not. Not yet.
She hadn't been able to find a way to leave Frank.
"But not today. I need more time."
"There isn't much.” He stepped back and held her at arm's length. "It has to be now."
She shook her head. "No. I can't. How much time do I have?"
"You must leave here…" He paused, his expression grim. "By Saturday night at the very latest."
Meiko felt a wave of nausea ripple through her stomach. She could barely speak.
"Then on Sunday morning…?"
Matsuo said nothing at first, only stared into her eyes. Finally he said, "You have
said nothing to Frank? About me? About the attack?"
She could only shake her head.
"Good. For a moment yesterday…" He waved a hand in the air. "Never mind. But listen: As long as you will be here a little longer, there is something I want you to do if the opportunity arises."
"Oh, no! You wouldn't ask me! Please don't—"
"It's not as callous as it sounds. I'm not asking you to try to steal or extract information from him, but if the opportunity presents itself—"
"No! How can you ask me to do that?"
"It's not for me! It's for you."
That stunned her. "For me? How?"
He looked away. "I don't want my brother and his type to look upon you as someone slinking back to Japan because of the war—an errant child running home before the storm. I want you to return with your head held high."
Meiko could see the truth in Matsuo's eyes. He was thinking of her. He truly cared how her homecoming was perceived. But he was asking her not only to leave Frank, but to betray him as well.
"The attack will be launched no matter what," he went on, seeming to read her mind. "Neither you nor I can change that. But if you can just bring something, any scrap—"
"Frank often brings papers home. But I don't think they're worth anything. I'll keep watch for anything useful, though."
She felt she could safely make that promise, secure in the knowledge that nothing of value would be available to her.
"Good." Matsuo smiled and patted the sand beside him. "Now, sit here and let me tell you of the life we'll have back in Tokyo."
But Meiko barely heard him. An icy hand of guilt and fear had gripped her throat.
"That man," she said, restraining herself from pointing. "The one in the flowered shirt at the water's edge. I'm not sure, but I think this is the third time he has walked by."
Matsuo glanced at him, then away. "You may be right. I haven't been watching. My eyes are only for you when you're near."
Normally those words would have made her blush, but now they swept by her, unnoticed in the wash of her anxiety. What if she were caught with Matsuo? Then she would be responsible not only for disgracing her family four years ago, but disgracing Frank as well.
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