Martin Smith - December 6

“It’s something everybody needs.”

“I couldn’t.” Willie pushed the bars toward Harry.

“Willie, we lied and bribed to save people in China. Do you think you’re any better than they were? What do you think, Iris?”

She said, “Maybe it’s a loan.”

“Definitely a loan,” said Harry, who thanked God for women, or else the world would be full of proud men sitting on their thumbs. “I know you’d do the same for me.”

“I am sorry for what I said before.” Willie squeezed Harry’s hand. “Do you have your way out?”

“A smart man always knows where the exit is.”

“You have an exit here?”

“All over.” Harry pulled free. “Don’t play cards with anyone, ever. If you meet anyone who reminds you of me in the least, run the other way. Go.”

As Willie and Iris moved toward the elevator, Harry thought they were just another version of lovers giddily leaping into flames. Sometimes he felt he was the only realist he knew. At the other end of the lobby, Beechum’s party was reaching its own climax of indomitable good cheer, “There’ll always be an England / And England shall be free / If England means as much to you / As England means to me.” No doubt the same words could be heard, Harry thought, in Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney, wherever Britons shouldered the white man’s burden of ungrateful wogs. The chorus repeated until sentimental tears ran down warm cheeks. Harry wondered how to find Michiko and where to hide from Ishigami. Now that he thought about it, he had needed the gold for himself. And, besides the plane, what exit?

ESPECIALLY AT NIGHT, the hotel looked like an Aztec temple with potted shrubs. As host, Beechum lingered in the driveway by the reflecting pool, making his good-byes of the evening while Alice waited in a car. Harry slid into the dark of the seat behind her.

“Willie and Iris seemed happy when they left,” Alice said.

“I don’t know why. Dodging destroyers to get to Germany is not, to me, a rational decision.”

“Harry, if you were a paragon of reason, you would not be in Beechum’s car nuzzling his wife.”

“But that’s not why I’m here.”

“No?” Alice laughed. “My God, what on earth for, then?”

“The Japanese are raiding Pearl Harbor. I think they’ll attack Singapore at the same time, probably Hong Kong, too.”

“When?”

“Within a day or two.”

Alice twisted the rearview mirror to see Harry. “This is not your area of expertise, is it?”

“No. By the way, did you see any photos in the evening papers?”

“Prime Minister Tojo riding in the park.”

“In tweeds.”

“Jodhpurs.”

“Almost British.”

“Some people at the embassy thought it was a good thing.”

“Did you believe it?” asked Harry.

“No, nor in the tooth fairy. I can’t think of anything more ominous.”

A man ran over to the car to tell Alice that Beechum would be only a minute longer. Harry raised his head when the man was gone. “I hear that the emperor has been studying charts of the Hawaiian Islands.”

“This is all highly circumstantial.” Her eyes fixed him via the mirror. “A Japanese attack may be overdue, but there’s something else, Harry, to make you so sure.”

“There’s been a little pressure on me to verify the missing oil.”

“Not your phony oil?”

“Suddenly it’s an issue. Targets, maybe.”

“How much pressure? Anything physical?”

“Just a touch, but they’re beating an accountant half to death at Sugamo Prison.”

“Harry, you must get on that plane tomorrow.”

“My thought, too.”

Alice was quiet for a moment. “Do you imagine if I thought anyone would heed our warning of an attack, that I would abandon my post? It’s too late for warnings, Harry. There are no brakes on the bus and no ears on the driver. This crash is going to happen.”

“We can try.”

“I’m not a spy, I’m just someone good at puzzles. If I suddenly had information, I’d have to name the source. Unfortunately, your reputation precedes you. No one will listen to you or me. It’s time for us to leave. Oddly enough, you’re becoming a better person. First Willie, now this.”

“As soon as we get to California, I’ll con some old lady out of her life savings, redress the balance.” Harry noticed that Beechum had moved out of sight.

“You’re going to do this, Harry? You will be on the plane?”

“Cross my heart.”

“You’ve said farewell to Butterfly?” Alice asked.

“Michiko? Not quite.”

“I can’t believe this. I am vying with a geisha for the affections of a gambler.”

Harry would have said that Michiko wasn’t a geisha, except now he was no longer sure. “First I have to find her.”

“You’ve lost her?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I have no doubt. Harry, you don’t have to tell her. If she knows you, she’ll understand soon enough that you’ve skipped out. Don’t go back to the club. All you need to do is get to the plane. Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me, to just get on the plane?”

“That’s what I said. We catch the Clipper from Hong Kong, and from there the world’s our oyster. A bungalow at the Beverly Hills, breakfast under an avocado tree.”

“So you are choosing me? I am the lucky girl? I wish I could think of something that was sacred to you to swear by.”

“I’m choosing California and you, it’s a package deal.”

“I forgot, you’re not a romantic.”

“Are you?”

“No. Of course not. We’re just a pair of black sheep.”

He placed a kiss on her neck and opened his door. Before he slipped out, he said, “You know what white sheep have? No imagination.”

HARRY HAD LEFT the Datsun across the street. The more he thought about it, the more he knew that Alice was right. The last thing he should do was look for Michiko. The smartest thing would be to stay out of Asakusa. Just lie low.

As he slid behind the wheel, he smelled the sweet scent of bay rum.

Things were black for a moment, then Harry discovered himself lying on the street and looking up at Beechum, who straddled Harry and pressed the edge of a cricket bat across his neck. Tears dripped from Beechum’s face, gone a chalky red.

“Stay away from my wife,” Beechum was saying. “Hands off my wife.”

Bigger things at play than adultery, Harry would have said if he could. Diplomatic deafness. The emperor’s new maps.

“Or I’ll kill you,” Beechum sobbed.

What was it DeGeorge said? Harry thought. “Get in line.”

Which earned him another swing of the bat.

His next conscious moment, Harry was on the sidewalk, unable to do more than raise his head and scan for Beechum, who was gone. An unusual amount of car traffic rolled by on the other side of the car, in the direction of government ministries. Harry concentrated on throwing up. There were dues in adultery. This was one of them.

Harry next found himself on his feet, rocking like a rocking chair and throwing up on the rear fender of his car. He had a knob the size of a golf ball behind his right ear and a tendency to lurch to one side with every step. Two old women with street brooms giggled with embarrassment while he retrieved his hat and reshaped it.

“Too much to drink, maybe,” one of the ladies suggested.

“One too many. I apologize for worrying you.”

“You should walk,” the first lady said. “Drink less, walk more.”

WALK? The idea appalled Harry, but he drove only as far as Tokyo Station before the smell of Beechum’s bay rum made him start to retch again and he decided that a long nocturnal stroll was just what he needed to reset his inner ear and stop veering to the side. He had fourteen hours to go before the plane, and as Alice had suggested, the smart thing would be to avoid Asakusa altogether, not to mention Ishigami and the Thought Police. It would have been nice to find Michiko, but he had to consider his own neck first. So, what the doctor ordered was a long, therapeutic walk. For an insomniac, a piece of cake.