Martin Smith - December 6

“Because they’ll win.”

EACH RADIO REPORT began with the opening bars of the “Warship March,” and with every account, Tokyo seemed to rise farther above sea level. Sun flags festooned streetcars, framed shopwindows, waved in hands. The air turned intoxicating. Eyes grew brighter and faces flushed with pride as loudspeakers broadcast news of an astonishing raid on Hawaii and the sinking of the entire American Battleship Row, as if history’s menacing giant had been slain with a single righteous blow. Paced by a military beat that poured from the radio, the entire city seemed in motion, becoming the new center of the world.

Harry left the apartment first, in case the colonel was still lurking. He wore a dark suit and fedora with a germ mask over his face, like any midlevel salaryman afflicted with a head cold but duty-bound to go to work. Michiko emerged minutes later in a beret, knitted cashmere coat and bright red lips, like a smart little sailboat challenging a squall. Her pace was quick enough so that by the time he reached the subway station, Michiko was only twenty feet behind. The throngs were themselves some protection-there was a giddy milling among the turnstiles. Just in case Ishigami did appear, Harry had tucked a boning knife wrapped in cloth into his waistband. Michiko carried the gun in a handbag, ready to plug a colonel of the Imperial Army in the middle of a station. Altogether, Harry thought, one hell of a girl. Loudspeakers advised all troops to return to their regiments, though Harry believed that Ishigami was no longer strictly responding to orders. The clumsy blows on Haruko, for example, suggested a deterioration of the colonel’s usually immaculate style. On the other hand, Michiko’s likening the suddenness of the attack to a hawk and mouse sounded right.

Although rhythmic clapping broke out on the train, Harry feigned drowsiness on the short ride to Tokyo Station rather than show his eyes. There the entire country seemed to pour out the station doors. Harry and Michiko were swept along by crowds to the plaza that faced the imperial palace, where thousands silently knelt along the moat. Men removed their hats, women set down their red-stitched scarves and trusted their prayers to a morning wind just as, not too many hours before, in the mid-Pacific, their sons had stood on the decks of aircraft carriers and launched their planes into the wind of the new day. Half of Harry wanted to rail at what a gimmick the emperor was, a nobody for a thousand years, just a mantelpiece curio; the other half had to bow to not only the beauty of the con but its beauty, period, the sweeping rampart of the walls and brocade of golden trees, perfect as both a screen and royal throne under a dome of blue. No imperial figure appeared on the battlements or bridge. No cannonade hastened the drop of a single leaf. Serenity, more than anything, was the mark of a demigod. A troop of Hitler Youth arrived in shorts and caps only to have their “Sieg Heil!” brushed aside. Responding to shadows on the moat, carp rose and tinged the green murk gold, reminding Harry of the tael bars he had wasted.

Harry pointed out the Datsun parked at the south end of the station, but Michiko wanted to walk.

“And be seen.” She was definite about that.

MOUNTED POLICE blocked the gate of the American embassy as if they’d trapped the Dillinger gang, which seemed, to Harry, to be going overboard, especially since down the street they’d left the embassy garage unguarded. He situated Michiko at a French café on the corner while he went through the garage door.

He pulled off his mask. The embassy he had known as a boy had been destroyed by earthquake, and a new residency of white stucco and black eaves stood at the top of a long compound landscaped with fountains and arbors like a college campus. However, the activity around them this morning suggested an anthill half kicked in. Attachés and secretaries huffed from building to building under the weight of cartons. All these Americans he had never seen before. Amazing. Moving was never easy, Harry thought, especially under the pressure of a declaration of war, and he was happy to help a clerk pick up folders she had dropped. She said that Roy Hooper was with the ambassador, which Harry took as invitation enough to wander into the official residency. No one seemed to be home. Harry was impressed by the bronzed doors, central hall and grand staircase of polished teak, a ballroom with a movie projector and screen, salon with piano, walnut-paneled smoking room, separate banquet hall empty except for a card table with an unfinished jigsaw puzzle of cowboys and Indians. The ambassador’s own desk sat on a Turkish carpet and held a silver-framed photo of Bobby Jones and a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt signed “With admiration and warmest regards to Good Old Joe from Frank.” The window looked down on the front driveway, where the ambassador and a pair of aides seemed to be effectively stalling Japanese diplomats in top hats while document destruction went on. No Hooper.

The chancery, down the hill, was the center of mayhem, where staff spilled as many files as they carried down the stairwells. Harry found Hooper’s office, a room with woodblock prints of Tokyo. Again no Hooper, but Harry shut the door behind himself.

The office safe was wide open and empty, but what he was after wasn’t particularly secret. The desk drawers that opened easily were stuffed with economic analyses and clippings from Japanese magazines and journals. He forced a locked drawer by hammering in a letter opener with his flask and found what he was after, a master list of American citizens residing in Japan: Foreign Service officers and staff, businessmen and agents, teachers and instructors, medical doctors and nurses, missionaries, military on liaison duty, foreign correspondents, American employees of either non-Japanese or Japanese companies, sailors or ships’ officers, Japanese wives of Americans, women and children, invalids or anyone requiring medical care, a list for every category, hundreds of names in all. “Harry Niles” was entered vaguely under “Self-employed.” A second list was of Americans for whom the embassy would request repatriation or safe internment. It was identical to the master list except for one name crossed out, Harry’s.

The smell of smoke insinuated itself into the office. Harry joined the traffic on the stairwell and asked, “Where’s Hooper?”

A man negotiating a carton around a corner asked, “Who are you?”

Harry began to tip the carton. “Where?”

“Jesus, fellow. Below, in the code room.”

Harry pushed ahead to the basement and followed the smoke to an open door where Hooper directed a bucket brigade. Inside the room, desks had been pushed aside to make space for iron-wire wastebaskets set on metal chairs. Files and codes had been stuffed into the baskets and set on fire, flames wrestling like torches and spewing smoke that collected under the ceiling and snowed black confetti. A nervous circle of diplomats stood ready with their pails.

“Was I right?” Harry asked.

Hooper almost dropped his pail from surprise. “Get out. You’re the last person who should be here.”

“Was I right about the attack? Did you ever tell the ambassador? I saw him trying to repel boarders. A little late.”

“He did everything he could. You have no idea of the efforts he made.”

“On the golf course?”

“Look, this is a top-secret area.”

“Was. It’s a firetrap now.” Harry peered in. The staff that wasn’t feeding the baskets were dismantling what looked like hooded, oversized typewriters.

“This is secret material, and you, Harry, are the most notorious collaborator in Japan.”

“First, how could I collaborate, when we haven’t been at war until today? Second, I warned you about the attack on Pearl.”