None of that would matter to him, though, if he knew he had Meiko back.
He hurled his cigarette butt down and savagely ground it into the dirt until it virtually disintegrated. What was he going to do? How could he leave here without Meiko? He knew where she lived. He was tempted to rush into her home and pull her from Frank's bed. But what would that prove? She had to choose him over Frank or having her back would mean nothing.
He was about to light another cigarette when he saw Meiko toiling up the hill on her bicycle. She was headed in his general direction but would probably veer to her left to stay on the road. Triumph and elation shot through him, energizing him. He leaped to the car and reached inside the driver's window.
* * *
Meiko's lungs burned and her legs ached as she forced her bike through the streets of Halewa Heights. It had been a ride of less than five miles but it had been all uphill. The houses were beginning to thin out here. Most were dark and quiet, with parked cars scattered along the dark streets. How would she find Matsuo? It seemed impossible.
And then, up ahead in the featureless dark at the end of the street, she saw a pair of car headlamps flash three times. She urged the bike forward, off the pavement and onto a hard-packed dirt surface. Cleared lots and partially built houses flanked her. Her tires slewed in the sandy dirt so she leaped off and pushed the bike forward. Ahead, she saw someone running toward her.
"Meiko!"
The loud whisper was unmistakably Matsuo's. She threw down the bike and ran forward. He took her in his arms and his embrace was like a vise, almost painful in its intensity.
"I thought you weren't coming. I prayed to all the gods that I would not have to leave here alone."
At least he hadn't asked if she had brought along any useful intelligence. From the way he had acted on Thursday, she had wondered which was more important to him.
"Get me out of here. Please."
She wanted to be far away, beyond the point of no return, to a place where, no matter how she felt or what she decided, she could not turn back.
"Yes," Matsuo said, tugging her toward the car behind him. "Of course. We'll have to rush. We're almost out of time."
"Wait!" She ran to her bike and pulled the tube free from the string that had secured it. "I brought a layout of the harbor defenses. It should be—"
She saw headlamps, heard the crunch of tires on gravel, and looked up to see a car roaring toward them. As it skidded to a stop a few feet in front of her, she heard the driver's door open. She couldn't see who it was behind the glare, but she felt all the strength drain out of her in a rush when she recognized the voice.
"Meiko!"
* * *
I slammed the car into neutral and was out and running toward her before the brake took complete hold. I’d seen her startled face in the glow from the headlamps as I pulled up, but I’d also spotted another car and a shadowy figure behind her. The sight of that figure, coupled with the knowledge that he was trying to make a traitor out of my wife, disintegrated the last vestiges of caution or restraint.
I charged.
I ran headlong past Meiko and heard her shout my name as I threw myself at her accomplice. I was in a blind rage, ready to tear him in half with my bare hands. I wasn't sure of how big he was there in the dark, but I was sure the wildfire burning through me would more than make up for whatever I might lack in size. I was wrong.
My attack was brought up short by a sledgehammer blow to the side of my neck. Fiery agony lanced down my left arm, and suddenly it seemed to weigh a ton. Before I could react to the pain, a fist like a battering ram drove into my belly, doubling me over, leaving me open to a crushing blow to the back of my neck.
I went down and stayed down, racked with pain and unable to move. My opponent squatted down beside me.
"Can't I ever be free of you?"
I didn't recognize the voice at first. It spoke softly, in a tone that was neither mocking nor consoling, but it was cold and hard, filled with an anger equal to my own. Then I placed it. Had I been able, I would have screamed out my shock, my grief that I had been such a gullible fool. How could I have allowed myself to be so completely taken in by Meiko's lies? But I was lying on my side, clutching my belly, and trying not to vomit. All I could manage was an agonized grunt.
"Matsuo!"
I could make out his face now in the spilled light from my car's headlamps. He didn't look any older than when I had last seen him at Berkeley. Meiko came up and stood over us.
"Oh, Frank!" she sobbed, and I could see tears glistening on her cheeks. "Oh, Frank, I'm so sorry!"
"You're never where you should be, Frank," Matsuo said in that cold, hard tone. "When someone needs you, you're gone. When you should be gone, you show up. And it is especially tragic that you should show up now. Because I can't let you live."
He grabbed my hair, pushed my head back, then readied his fist for a blow to my exposed throat.
Meiko screamed and grabbed his arm. "No! You can't!"
"There's no choice. You told me he expected an attack. Now that you've stolen a diagram of the harbor, he'll know a raid is planned."
"We'll take him with us!"
"Impossible. There's barely room in the raft for two of us. There's no other way."
Meiko shoved herself between the two of us. "I forbid it! If you kill him, you will have to kill me. Because I'll go to the Navy and tell them myself."
I saw Matsuo's incredulous expression as he stared at her.
I couldn't understand Meiko. She had led me along, set me up, and now she was defending me. I forgot about trying to understand. The time she was buying me was helping. My intestinal spasms had stopped and I was getting more feeling back into my limbs. Only one thing for me to do. I had to forget about Meiko and forget about getting even with Matsuo. I had to warn the fleet. If I could make it to my car...
It had to be now. I pushed myself off the ground, staggered to my feet, and forced myself into a lopsided run toward the car. I heard scuffling behind me, heard Meiko shriek, "No!" and then I was in the front seat, thanking God I hadn't shut off the engine as I shifted into reverse. A cloud of dust spewed up from the spinning tires, blotting Meiko and Matsuo from view and enveloping the car as it slewed backward.
Suddenly Matsuo burst through the cloud and threw himself against my side of the car. Just inches from me, he caught the window post with his hand and managed to get his feet on the running board. I jammed on the brakes, and almost tossed him off as I revved into first gear, but he held on by his fingertips. I started to roll up the window while making a sharp turn to the right, but before I could get it up far enough to dislodge his hand, he regained his balance. I saw him rear back with his free arm and then I heard a deafening smash as the air around me was filled with countless flying shards of glass.
He had smashed the window with his bare hand!
I pulled the car into a sharper turn and tried to fight off Matsuo's arm as it snaked in the window and grabbed the steering wheel. I pounded on that arm, I pulled at his fingers, but he had the wheel in a death grip, holding it into the turn to bring me back toward where we started. In a last, desperate move, I yanked on my door handle and threw myself against the door. The move knocked Matsuo off the running board. With his feet and lower legs dragging in the dirt beside the car, he finally lost his grip on the wheel.
Suddenly, Matsuo let go of the car entirely and hurled himself away. I watched him roll in the dirt, then glanced ahead and realized why he had done it—the car was nosing toward a stand of trees. I stood on the brake but there wasn't enough room to stop. The car skidded, started to spin, then slammed broadside against the trees.
I was shaken but still alert and able to move. I pushed my way out of the car and found Matsuo there, standing by the door, staring at me with murder in his eyes.
As he drew his fist back, I only had time for one thought: He's going to kill me.
Then his fist flashed forward toward my face and the world e
xploded into a thousand lights.
* * *
Meiko nearly lost all control as she watched Matsuo approach with Frank's limp form slung over his shoulders.
He can't be dead! Oh, please, Frank can't be dead!
Matsuo must have read her thoughts. "He's just unconscious."
Meiko heard herself gasp with relief. "What are you going to do with him?"
Matsuo glanced around at the partially completed houses. "I'm not sure, but I have an idea."
He dumped Frank onto the ground and hurried off to one of the lots. As he rummaged through the building supplies, Meiko knelt beside Frank and gently, gingerly began to brush the hair away from his face.
"Poor Frank," she whispered, feeling utterly wretched. "This is all my fault. If I hadn't come into your life, if I'd refused to marry you, none of this would have happened."
Matsuo suddenly returned. He had a hammer jammed into his belt and things clinked in his pocket. He lifted Frank and slung him over his shoulders again.
"What—what are you going to do?" she asked, afraid of the answer.
He had already turned away and started walking uphill.
"I'm going to find a place to put him where he'll be safely out of touch until morning," he said over his shoulder.
Meiko followed, chilled and baffled by the change in Matsuo. He was like a raging, bloodthirsty animal. What had happened to make him like this? Was it her fault? Could those years of thinking she was dead have had this effect on him? Was she some sort of bad-luck charm? Look how she had disgraced her family—look at poor Frank. Did misfortune taint everyone she loved? She didn't know. She didn't even know if she wanted to return to Japan with this new Matsuo.
She followed him into the wooded area uphill from the new construction, through the trees until they reached a relatively clear area. Only the stars and a half-moon lit the scene as Matsuo lay Frank on the ground next to a tree. What was he going to do?
"Matsuo…?"
"I'll be through in a minute."
She watched as he removed the hammer from his belt, then took something from his pocket. He raised Frank's forearm against the tree, and held the thing from his pocket over it. She stepped closer and saw that it was a heavy, six-inch nail. She screamed out her horror as Matsuo raised the hammer.
* * *
I awoke to cries of agony—my own.
When my eyes could focus, I saw Matsuo straightening up to stand over me. Behind him stood Meiko, half-turned away, her face buried in her hands, sobbing. My head and upper back were propped against a tree, the rest of me stretched out on the ground. My arm...
The pain in my right forearm went far beyond anything I had ever experienced, ever imagined. It shot out of the center of my arm and pulsed back and forth between my shoulder and fingertips like liquid fire. I looked and saw a heavy-duty nail punched through the flesh of my arm two or three inches this side of my wrist and into the thick trunk of an ironwood tree.
I retched, and the movement caused a spasm of pain in the arm, pain even more intense than before. The world swam around me for an instant.
"I'm letting you live," Matsuo said in a voice cold and harsh for all the softness of its whisper. "For her sake. Because she wants it and because she says you've been good to her. I'm allowing it for another reason as well.” He pointed behind him. “Look down there.”
Through pain-blurred eyes I could see the lights of the fleet in the east loch.
"I've positioned you here so you'll have a balcony seat at the show tomorrow morning. I don't want you to miss a minute of it. Your country is trying to strangle mine. You've left us only two roads to follow: Either exist on a leash, or go to war. Tomorrow morning you'll see firsthand the choice we have made. You'll watch the destruction of your Pacific Fleet."
The import of what he was saying finally broke through the haze of pain enveloping me. There was going to be an attack on the fleet, and it was set for tomorrow.
"The final part of a declaration of war has already been sent to our Washington Embassy. The Ambassador Nomura and Envoy Kurusu have an appointment with Secretary of State Hull at 1:00 P.M. Washington time. They will present him with the declaration, and shortly after that our planes will be over Pearl Harbor."
He paused, as if for effect, then said, "I am taking a chance leaving you here alive. There is always the possibility you could tear yourself free of that nail and warn the fleet. But I know you, Frank Slater. Unless someone comes by and frees you—and there is no one within earshot—you will still be right here tomorrow morning."
He gave me one long last look, as if trying to read my face in the moonlight, then turned and strode away. He stopped at Meiko's side and said something to her, but she lurched away and came toward me. Moonlight glistened off her wet cheeks as she threw herself on her knees beside me.
"Oh, Frank! I never knew this would happen. Please believe me. I never knew Matsuo was alive. I swear it!"
"We have to hurry, Meiko," Matsuo said in Japanese. "We are already late."
"Please understand, Frank. I have no choice in this."
Matsuo came up behind her, took her by the arm and fairly dragged her to her feet.
"It is chu, Frank!" she cried as he pulled her away down the hill. "It is chu!"
I lay sprawled against the tree and watched them go, catching a last backward glance from Meiko before they disappeared into the dark. I wanted to call to her, say something that would change her mind, bring her back. But my tongue was stuck against the roof of my mouth and I was too racked by pain and grief to do anything more than stare after her like a mute idiot. After all, what could I say to counter the ancient, almost inborn imperatives of her endless debt to the Emperor? I was no match for chu.
Besides, there was another matter that had to take precedence—I had to get free and warn the fleet.
I tried to shift my position on the ground and suddenly found my voice with a cry of agony. The slightest movement, even the most minute rotation on the spindle of the nail resulted in an unnerving blast of pain that caused my vision to shimmer toward black. How would I ever get free? There was surprisingly little bleeding around the nail now, but I knew that would change if I ever did manage to tear my arm free—I'd pass out from the pain and probably bleed myself into a coma while I was unconscious.
And then I realized—I didn't have to get free. Matsuo had said the final part of the declaration of war had been transmitted to the Japanese Embassy in Washington—eight to ten hours before the attack. It would be in Purple, of course, and Washington had three Purple magic machines.
I would have laughed out loud if I hadn't been in such agony. We would have the message deciphered even before the Japs, and a copy on the Secretary of State's desk hours before the scheduled presentation. The warning would go out to all units in the Pacific, and when the Jap planes arrived over Oahu, they'd find Army interceptor squadrons in the air and a battle-ready fleet ready and waiting for them.
The last laugh would be on Matsuo and his "surprise" attack.
DECEMBER 7
We're late, Matsuo thought as he paddled the raft out from shore.
The other officers at Naval Intelligence had warned him about coming here, telling him it was a fool's errand, too full of risks with too many variables waiting to betray him. And they were right. Nothing had gone according to plan.
He wished Meiko would say something. She had been so quiet during the headlong drive down to the beach from Halewa Heights, and now she sat slumped in the front of the raft in a daze.
"Meiko," he said, finally. "Don't you understand? I did what I had to do."
Her voice was like ice, and sharp as a January wind. "I will never understand what you did. I have never seen such brutality. And I will never forget what I saw you do. Matsuo… how could you?"
He had been brutal with Frank, yes, but the situation demanded it. This was not a game. This was war. Couldn't she see that?
Matsuo stopped rowing and checked his watch.
Almost 12:15. So late. The sub could have come and gone already. Most likely it had done just that. So here he was, floating in a raft off Oahu, a United States territory which, eight hours from now, would hate and fear all Japanese. With him was a diagram of the harbor that was to be attacked in the morning. And the woman he had loved as long as he could remember now thought of him as some savage beast.
What else could go wrong?
They waited in silence, but still no submarine. At twelve-thirty, he picked up the paddle and prepared to row ashore. His best hope was to get back to the car and drive to some remote part of the island's mountains to await the outcome of the attack and the war. Perhaps they could find a place to hide for a year or so until the war was over, and then return to Japan.
As he lifted the paddle, the sea to port began to boil. Suddenly a conning tower burst up toward the moonlit sky with water cascading off it on all sides. Matsuo held his breath.
Is it mine?
Then the upper hull broke the surface and he saw the miniature sub and the seaplane lashed to its afterdeck. Relief swept through him like a comforting breeze.
They were safe.
* * *
Commander Fuchida lifted his gaze from the diagram and stared at Matsuo, his soft brown eyes glowing. His thin lips curled into a smile under his short bush mustache. "This is a most remarkable achievement."
Matsuo had been received with more than a little reserve aboard the carrier Agaki, flagship of the Strike Force.
And rightly so, he thought. After all, he would have been suspicious, too, of a man and a woman arriving by seaplane and claiming to have a map of the harbor that was the object of an attack known to only a privileged few in all of Japan. Despite the letter he carried from Yamamoto, signed personally and sealed with his hanko, he and the harbor diagram were still received with suspicion by the ships' officers until Fuchida had entered the ward room, embraced him, and introduced him as the finest intelligence officer in all Japan.
Suddenly, he was among friends.
"It is mostly due to the efforts of Meiko Mazaki," Matsuo said.
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