Mr. Moto Omnibus

by John P. Marquand

15

  EITHER TELL the whole truth or none at all was an almost infallible business maxim. Under present circumstances, even though the position of the Japanese was still equivocal, the only solution was frankness. At least they were after the same thing. At least they were all in the business.

  The man on the ground groaned and struggled to his hands and knees. Jack put his hands beneath his arms and pulled him to his feet. After all, there were times when one could afford to be cordial.

  “Out like a light, weren’t you, Mac?” Jack Rhyce said, and slapped him affectionately on the back. “Never mind. We’re all pals now. Your gun’s right over there.”

  Mr. Moto laughed in a completely genuine way.

  “His English is not good. Tell him in Japanese.”

  “I apologize for your discomfort,” Jack Rhyce said in Japanese. “So it was the tea and the coffee back there at the hotel that gave me away on the language, was it?”

  Mr. Moto laughed again, and both the men in blue serge smiled. Everything could change very quickly in Japan.

  “Oh, no,” Mr. Moto said. “Earlier, Mr. Rhyce.”

  “Earlier?” Jack Rhyce repeated.

  Mr. Moto nodded.

  “In Burma, Mr. Rhyce,” Mr. Moto said. “We had your name on file. Japanese linguist, born in Japan. I even had a glimpse of you once in Myitkyina.” Mr. Moto laughed heartily. “I did not speak because I was moving the other way, but I remembered you when I saw you at the airport, Mr. Rhyce.” Everyone laughed heartily. After all, the war was over.

  “The word always was that you people had good Intelligence,” Jack Rhyce said, “but I didn’t know you were working so hard at it now.”

  “Oh, not so hard,” Mr. Moto said, “with shortness of funds and the misfortunes. Poor Japan. We would not have made a mistake such as I have made tonight, before the war. The machinery was not bad before the war.”

  “Still, there was the German, Sorge,” Jack Rhyce said.

  “Oh, yes, Sorge,” Mr. Moto said. “Such a nice man, Sorge. So intelligent; but don’t forget, please, we caught Sorge. And did you Americans catch Dr. Fuchs? And the British who always boast so much about their Intelligence—did they stop Burgess or MacLean? So hard, so very difficult to manage everything.”

  It was a relief to talk naturally, without being under the necessity of cover. That Mr. Moto spoke so frankly indicated more than professional courtesy. It showed a colleague’s respect.

  “It’s a tough life all right,” Jack Rhyce said. “It’s beginning to get me down these days.”

  “Get you down?” Mr. Moto said. “I wish so much I could visit your great country more often. I cannot keep up with the idiom now. Before everything was so unhappy, I was over once a year at least, New York, Washington, or Honolulu. Even when my duties were in Paris and London I endeavored to spend a week or two of observation in New York. Ha-ha. . . . In old New York the peach-crop’s always fine, isn’t it, Mr. Rhyce?”

  “I wish I knew where you picked that one up,” Jack Rhyce said.

  “A song from The Red Mill was sung in the third floor corridor of the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco,” Mr. Moto answered, “the evening before you left, Mr. Rhyce?”

  “You haven’t got such a bad setup, have you?” Jack Rhyce said. “So the Japanese schoolboy tailed me from Fisherman’s Wharf, but you Japs get things twisted, I was up on that floor, all right, but I didn’t sing the song.”

  Mr. Moto sighed.

  “So sorry I have been so very stupid,” he said. “He was so sure that you were Mr. Ben that when he gave the signal, I came myself to meet you at the airport instead of sending someone else. I mention it only so that you will give me some excuse. But why do we stand out here?”

  “That’s easy,” Jack Rhyce answered. “Because you haven’t asked me in.”

  Mr. Moto drew in his breath in a loud, deprecating way.

  “Oh!” he said. “The work has got me down, too, as you put it, so that I have lost my manners. This house is only loaned for a purpose for which I am so glad is now not necessary, by a very kind Japanese nobleman. So really little money now that individuals contribute. Poor Japan. He would be honored to know that you have been his guest. Come in, please, and my associates will warm us some sake. Do not be concerned about them. It is only they and me here, and unpleasantnesses are entirely over. Please to enter, Mr. Rhyce, and no need to take off shoes. This part of the Baron’s residence is European.”

  The lights were on in the hall and also in a large room to the right. It was one of those newer houses. Jack Rhyce could see, that wealthier Japanese had built in the prosperous years that had preceded the war—a house half-European, half-Japanese, that had the schizophrenic quality of as much in present-day Japan. No Japanese, as far as Jack Rhyce knew, ever wishfully inhabited his Western rooms except for reasons of hospitality; and Jack Rhyce did not blame them, because the European section of such houses was usually as ugly and uncomfortable as its Japanese counterpart was beautiful. The house he entered now was no exception. The furnishings of the entrance hall gave forth a musty odor, from age and disuse; but they had been elaborate once, designed to impress, and perhaps please, the European guest, and also to display the owner’s close acquaintance with Western living. The hall carpet was crimson, sprinkled with fleur-de-lis; the wallpaper artificial Cordovan leather; the mirror bad Victorian; and the chairs golden oak, upholstered with red plush.

  Mr. Moto must have read the thoughts that ran through Jack’s mind.

  “We used to try so hard,” Mr. Rhyce,” he said. “Poor Japan. The chairs are equally hideous in the parlor, but Americans like chairs.”

  Several table lamps that were lighted in the cluttered, over-decorated parlor revealed oil paintings of English cattle, encased in immense gold frames, two pieces of artificial tapestry, tapestry-covered Jacobean chairs and upholstered easy chairs of a turn-of-the-century design. There was also a European fireplace with a coal grate, in which Jack Rhyce noticed a coal fire glowing in spite of the hot night. The coffee table had been cleared of its cigarette boxes and impedimenta; on it were knotted strings and leather thongs and a pair of handcuffs.

  “Well, well,” Jack Rhyce said, “so you were fixing to have a singing school.”

  Mr. Moto laughed boisterously.

  “Ha-ha,” he said, “so nice a way you have of saying funny things, Mr. Rhyce.” He called an order in angry Japanese. “Take these away and bring the sake and cigarettes. Please sit down, Mr. Rhyce.”

  Jack Rhyce sat down in one of the easy chairs. The sake had come at almost the moment that Mr. Moto had called, in a jar with a glaze that looked like celadon.

  “Beautiful,” Jack Rhyce said, nodding to the jar.

  “You appreciate it?” Mr. Moto asked. “I am so pleased. It has been in the Baron’s family for many hundred years. The Baron would be pleased to present it to you, I think.”

  “What makes you think so?” Jack asked. “Maybe he’s anti-American.”

  “Oh, no,” Mr. Moto said. “He is my cousin. You enjoy the wine?”

  He was grateful for the wine from the fragile thimble of a cup that one of the men offered him.

  “These two boys you have with you,” Jack Rhyce said, “look as though they had been in the Imperial Marines—very tough, I mean.”

  “So nice of you to notice,” Mr. Moto said. “I hope you like the wine.”

  “I do,” Jack Rhyce said. “It’s nice and hot. I only wish it were a Texas jigger.”

  “A Texas jigger?” Mr. Moto said, and he burst into appropriate laughter when Jack Rhyce explained the phrase.

  “Please tell the Marines in Japanese. They will appreciate about the jigger. One of them will stand beside you, ready to fill the cup.”

  Even into that European room there had crept an atmosphere of Oriental hospitality, politeness and good manners.

  “To happy peace between the United States and poor Japan,” Mr. Moto said. “Very foolish men made the war. Ha-ha. Nea
rly all of them are dead.”

  Jack Rhyce drank a second thimbleful of wine and held out his cup for more.

  “Judging from my short stay here,” he said, “it looks to me as though Japan is going to make out pretty well.”

  “You think?” Mr. Moto said. “There are so many dangers, but I am glad you think. It is very lovely to talk to an intelligent American agent who is engaged in my own line of work. Poor Japan. We had such a very lovely Intelligence system before the war.”

  “We heard you were starting work again,” Jack Rhyce said. “Frankly, I didn’t know it would be so good.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Mr. Moto said, “but only in such a small way now. So little money. Let me see. There was once such nice men in your Intelligence in Washington. Do you remember Colonel Bryson? He was such a lovely man. I was so sorry he broke his neck in Vienna. Then there was Mr. Makepeace. They used to call him Tommy. What has become of him, I wonder?”

  Obviously Mr. Moto was checking on Jack Rhyce’s background, and Jack Rhyce was relieved that he could come up with an answer.

  “He was in Prague six years ago,” Jack Rhyce said, “but since then Mr. Makepeace has not been heard from.”

  “So too bad,” Mr. Moto said. “Well, ha-ha, you cannot blame poor Japan for Mr. Makepeace. So too bad so many lovely people cannot live forever.”

  “That’s quite a thought,” Jack Rhyce said, “but we don’t, you know.”

  The social amenities were nearly over. Mr. Moto waved to one of the attendants for a match and lighted a cigarette.

  “And you?” he asked, pointing to the box.

  “Thanks,” Jack Rhyce said. “I don’t use them.”

  “So right of you,” Mr. Moto said. “So very, very right. I was taught that when I first entered the Intelligence. In the late twenties, it was. My Chief, dear old Mr. Naguna, never smoked cigarettes, for they left untidy traces. Dear old Mr. Naguna. Some more wine, Mr. Rhyce?”

  “Thanks, I could do with a little more,” Jack Rhyce said.

  Mr. Moto gestured to one of the men.

  “He is stupid,” he said. “I told him to stay near you, Mr. Rhyce, but in his simple brain he was thinking that you must have had enough, just as in his simple brain he thought you would not turn on him as you did outside, because he had a weapon directed at your back. Poor Japan. We never can understand how you Westerners can drink so much and not lose your wits. Confidentially, that is why the German Sorge puzzled our Mr. Naguna for several years. It did not seem possible that Mr. Sorge could be brilliant, with his drinking. He was like a figure in a Kabuki play.”

  “I told you I could do with a drink,” Jack Rhyce said. “I didn’t mean a teaspoonful at a time.”

  Mr. Moto laughed. The Japanese sooner or later laughed too much.

  “Mr. Rhyce, I like you so very much,” he said, “because you are so—doctrinaire, as the French say, about cigarettes and everything. That turn on the left foot, out of doors, was very beautiful. I could admire it even when I did not know what might follow. But I did know that the move was not Russian—at least not what the procedure was in Moscow before the war, Mr. Rhyce.”

  “Thanks,” Jack Rhyce said. “They’ll be pleased to know that, back home.”

  “Mr. Moto drew in on his cigarette and passed his hands over his closely cropped, graying hair.

  “When I see someone like you, so bright and young, in the profession, there is some excuse for my mistakes,” he said. “I have never been familiar with Western features, but it would be my fallible opinion that you have a kind face, Mr. Rhyce. Please, I hope you will treat my errors kindly. I did not have the benefit of records because ours were destroyed in the bombing, and such as remained, which we did not burn ourselves, were taken over by your General McArthur. Such a very nice man—but poor Japan. Therefore, I can only rely on memory—but you were in Japan until the age of five. You were in Japanese language school in Colorado, because one of my own young men taught you and reported you as far above the average. Please do not make a mental note. Your Counterintelligence found him out. Then you were in combat Intelligence in Burma. Reports that came later said that your conduct with our people was most correct. Then there is an alert in my echelon, just as there must have been in yours. Elements in the Politburo were moving in. Poor Japan. So many people, so poor. So much discontent. The intellectuals so après guerre. Orders to look for a new personality. An American on file. The name on the intercept—Big Ben. Popular. Entertainment organizer, like someone on your stage, perhaps, or one of your motion picture entertainers who loved Russia. Look out for this American—Big Ben, with the singing voice and with the weakness for singing a song from that old entertainment called Red Mill. I heard it in New York when a very small boy, when my father was in the consulate in New York.”

  “That sure dates you,” Jack Rhyce said. “That show opened in 1906 in old New York.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Moto said. “But they still had the tune in 1912. Imagine my joy to hear of you from San Francisco. So pleased when I saw you at the airport. So pleased about the Friendship League which we have watched with interest. So pleased about your weekend excursion, just where Mr. Gibson was going. So pleased when you and the pretty Miss Bogart entered Chrysanthemum Rest—and then to find you are American Intelligence is difficult. My mind, I know, you too made up. I should have kept an open mind, but you will admit that everything did fit.”

  Mr. Moto paused. He had, after all, made his point.

  “Don’t blame yourself too much,” Jack Rhyce said. “Anyway, you’re not Russian. I’ve been worried about that from the first time you picked me up.”

  “Not Russian,” Mr. Moto shook his head. “Nationalist Japan Party, Mr. Rhyce. Fascist, perhaps, but pro-Emperor, anti-Communist. So much trouble—poor Japan. But when the typhoon ceases, back will spring the bamboo.”

  An earnestness in Mr. Moto’s words made Jack Rhyce realize that he might be hearing a true explanation of the Japanese mood and the Japanese aspirations.

  “Are Nationalists anti-American these days?” he asked.

  Mr. Moto shook his head vigorously.

  “Not now,” he said. “Not enlightened ones. The United States is so very useful. Later perhaps, but not now. So silly to shoot Santa Claus, as your politicians used to say when I was in Washington. You see, I’m being very frank, Mr. Rhyce.”

  “I’d say you give every appearance of being,” Jack Rhyce said. But from his experience, frankness in the Western sense of the word did not exist in the Orient. The difficulties among most people always lay in a misconception of each other’s values. There was always an ultimate shift of meaning—even between Americans and Englishmen, who thought as nearly alike as any two nations.

  “I am being frank,” Mr. Moto said, “because I hope so much that we will be temporary partners, Mr. Rhyce. There are groups here on the Left, and on the Right, too, so anxious to arouse feeling against America. And the plain Japanese man can change so quickly.”

  Mr. Moto paused, and while Jack Rhyce waited for him to continue, he had a moment to speculate on Mr. Moto’s background. He came from the old aristocracy. He must have been educated abroad, probably in an Eastern American university. There had been all sorts of strains and cleavages in his mental upbringing, but there could never have been any wavering in loyalty. He stood for Old Japan.

  “The Left Wing has been growing very dangerously lately,” Mr. Moto said. “That is the trouble with fanatics. One should always multiply their danger by ten or twenty, I believe. At the moment we are as anxious as you are to uphold American prestige, and I am willing to pool information if you are, Mr. Rhyce.”

  Jack appeared to hesitate, even though the man seated opposite must have known already that he had no choice. With Bill Gibson dead, he did not know the organization, and things were closing in so rapidly that the only possible hope of achieving success was to rely on outside chance.

  “I don’t see why we shouldn’t do business,” he said slo
wly, “and maybe I know a few things you don’t.” He paused again. It was better to start slowly. “I have no briefing from Mr. Gibson, you understand. That was to have occurred up here. He only told me that he was being followed, and intimated that he was in danger. He didn’t want us to be seen together.”

  “So right,” Mr. Moto said. “Yes, so very right.”

  He did not blame Mr. Moto for looking discouraged. It was time to hurry on and show that he had some value.

  “Still Mr. Gibson sent us back a few facts,” Jack Rhyce went on. “This man, Big Ben, has been meeting a Russian agent named Skirov at intervals. Do you know this Skirov?”

  Mr. Moto’s features sharpened.

  “Not prewar,” he said,” an après guerre Russian, very well trained and very dangerous, Mr. Rhyce, I’m sorry we have not seen him, but I believe he had been in Japan.”

  “We rate him above this Big Ben,” Jack Rhyce said. “Skirov has a very high priority back in our office.”

  “He is very well trained,” Mr. Moto said, “a man of great potentials. We have tried very hard to find him.”

  “This Big Ben might lead him to us,” Jack Rhyce said.

  “Yes,” Mr. Moto answered. “Why are you smiling, Mr. Rhyce?”

  “About this Skirov,” Jack Rhyce said. “I’ve never seen him, but we have a photograph and an accurate description. It might amuse you to know that when I found you up there in our room I had a hunch for a few minutes that you might be Skirov.”

  Mr. Moto smiled politely, but Jack Rhyce thought that he was startled.

  “So funny how often people confuse things when they get fixed ideas,” Mr. Moto said. “That was my difficulty with you, Mr. Rhyce. I had such very fixed ideas. What other information did Mr. Gibson send back home?”

  “This meeting between Skirov and Big Ben,” Jack Rhyce said, “Bill Gibson believed that there was one coming up, and there was something so important about it that he was upset. He had learned something new, but he did not have time to tell me in Tokyo, and he can’t tell us now.”

  Mr. Moto lighted another cigarette. “I think I will have another cup of wine,” he said. “Perhaps I know somewhat more than you about what was troubling Mr. Gibson. I am sorry, of course, that you do not know your apparatus here. It is a deep disappointment to me. I was hoping we could have profitable exchange of facts.”